Twilight: Tolmekian's TechTree Fix v3.51 Release 05-10-13

Tolmekian

Join Date 08/2007

+24

Twilight: Tolmekian's TechTree Fix v3.51 Release 05-10-13

Purpose of the mod:

This mod addresses widespread errors in the TotA TechTree.xml files. These errors pretty much broke many of the unique TechTrees, causing the AI to pursue a deeply flawed research strategy and outright preventing the research of many techs. Part of the fix included rearranging a number of the TechTrees to fix the seemingly random arrangement of some techs and reduce the number of branches for the AI to get sidetracked on. Along the way, I ended up fixing many UP issues, planetary improvements, starbase modules, and did some general improvement and balancing on individual techs.

This mod is a direct result of MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod, which provided the inspiration. A lot of my development commentary and good input from other modders working on their own fixes is in that topic. Thanks MarvinKosh, Quaternus, deweyjohn, TOV, foxthree, qrtxian and all others for input and support.

05-10-13: v3.51 release

Update to fix some errors in v3.5.

Because I forgot to mention for the 3.5 release: The Hyperion improvements (shipyard, shrinker, logistics, resupply) are now all Galactic Achievements instead of Super Projects. No more collecting shrinkers , it really matters who builds these things.
I would also like to add a special thanks to Gaunathor for extensive proofreading, playtesting, and feedback. His contributions have played a big part in me continuing the work, fixing/improving even more than I originally intended, and finally putting out a (more or less) finished product after all this time. It's fair to say that without him, this mod wouldn't be nearly what it is. Thanks.

04-28-13: v3.5 release

Here it is, the more or less finished product after all this time. It's been about a year since I put this project down, so I'm a bit fuzzy on what exactly I did before coming back to finish it up. I'm pretty sure I've got the major things nailed down, though. Let's see:

Fixed those minor but embarrassing typos that made it into v3.0
Standardized the cost vs maintenance vs output ratios for the various improvement. Now every race can be content with their own improvements and not shop around for the obvious best. You can now upgrade to Industrial Sectors without fretting about the inefficiencies.

In general, costs went down, sometimes a lot. Maintenance costs were also reduced or eliminated on many improvements. No more taking years upon years to develop a planet only to have the game end immediately thereafter.

Made starting techs that allow a bottom-tier improvement for many of the improvement lines. The idea being to allow the AI access to each type of improvement and allow balanced planet development - no filling up planets before researching basic improvements.

eg. Races that use the "normal" economic structures (banks, stock markets, etc) now start with Market Economics, which allows construction of the Market Center.
If you make a custom tech tree, this allows you to select the base techs for your tree without needing conflicting "history" techs to unlock basic improvements.

Rounded out the Temple morale improvements, so Altarians and Drath have a progression of decent improvements unlocked by various techs, starting with Spiritual Happiness.
Did away entirely with farms, charging stalks, etc. Replaced them with a universal, one-per-planet improvement that gives a bonus to pop growth and %food.
Did away with Advanced Extreme Colonization techs. Now only one tech is required for each type of extreme planets.
Now every tech tree includes the Government techs and Planetary Defense Techs. No good reason for some races to go without.
Omega Research Center: Now with more awesome. No longer just a watered down tech capital, the Omega Research Center is a Galactic Achievement worthy of the title.

Speaking of watered down Tech Capital . . . I watered down the Tech Capital. Kind of. Bonus from 100% to 50%, but it now generates 14tp on its own. Which leads to the next point . . .

All improvements that give a bonus to manufacturing or research now also generate their own mp or tp proportional to the bonus. This is to counteract the sometimes painful misplacement of these improvements by the AI.
The evil races (Drengin, Korath, Yor) got a lot of attention during 3.5 development due to general lack of competitiveness.

Now have access to all 4 types of capitals (economic, technological, political, manufacturing) or an equivalent structure.
Drengin got a couple new unique techs - Superior Warships and Fleet Domination - which boost stats and unlock Galactic Achievements to speed their conquest of the galaxy.
Korath have a new Galactic Achievement - the Aul Incinerator. Out with the one-per-planet suckfest and in with something that you'll actually want.
Don't think the Yor got any new stuff, but some stuff is easier to get and the Manufacturing Vortex and Distributed Energy Matrix got pretty big buffs.

Sprinkled a couple speed bonuses in the basic techs to speed things up a bit. Basically, the AI never designs ships with engines and ends up late game with ships that move 3 or 4 per turn. Now we're looking at 6 or 7.
Uuuuuh . . . I think that's the major stuff.
Enjoy!

TechTree Fix v3.51 with Dumb Old Minors: I did nothing to the minor races here. If you want the same dumb minors you've always known and loved, this is the mod for you.

TechTree Fix v3.51 with Smart Old Minors: Same old minors that still won't colonize, but I added code to make them play to the best of the AI's ability. I gave them respectable descriptions, modest bonuses, and changed out the silly race images to reflect their upgrade. Since they can't colonize, they'll send out a bunch of freighters and actually send constructors to grab up a lot of the resources while the majors are still colonizing. They still get slaughtered when it comes down to it, but I've had fun watching them. It's also interesting to see the majors make a ton of regular starbases since there are fewer resources to grab.

TechTree Fix v3.51 with MoOII Minors: The MoOII minors in this mod will colonize and behave pretty much like weak majors. Much larger than the other mods due to the RaceImage and RaceLogo files. If you try this mod, remember to use the "quick save fix". That is, the minors won't start behaving like majors until you save and reload. So, start your game, quicksave, reload, and enjoy.

TechTree Fix v3.51 with MoOII and Smart Old Minors: Why not? If you want a little variety, I packaged up both versions of the minors in one mod. Your minors could be one, the other, or a mix of both. Still be sure to use the quick-save fix, or your MoOII minors won't play nice. I haven't tested this arrangement, but I can't see why it won't work. (famous last words.)

03-04-12: v3.0 Release

v3.0 continues the work, this time focusing on starbase modules and planetary improvements, particularly Galactic Achievements, Super Projects, and Trade Goods. Also included is a wonderful conversation mod, kindly contributed by qrtxian. His mod fixes the errors in the GC2_Conversations.xml, so now you can enjoy all the unique dialogue as intended.

Highlights

All fleet modules that were removed in v2.0 are restored. That's the fleet attack/defense and fleet warp bubbles, etc.
Entire Starbase Fortification branch removed. The attack, defense, and assist modules were spread uniformly among the appropriate weapons and defense techs.
Enhanced Battle Stations starbase modules and added equivalent Starbase Defenses modules.
No more easy pickings, expect to see some well armed starbases.
Addressed a limitation where the AI will only use the first 100 starbase modules in the xml file. Rearranged, removed, and edited starbase modules to ensure the most basic and useful modules are AI accessible.
Evil weapons and good defenses are now available at every weapon/defense level, instead of only at the end.
Extensive changes to Galactic Achievements, Super Projects, and Trade Goods. I went after them with the idea that every one should be a "must have". Costs reduced and AI values increased to ensure the AIs actually have a chance to build them, given their inability to plan planetary improvements.
Edit to add - All the trade goods now have a unique icon rather than a stack of boxes. Except the Xinathium Hull Plating. I figured that would still come in boxes. I chose from among the unused icons that come with the game, so they may not be perfect. They are, in my opinion, better than the boxes.
Two previously unused Galactic Achievements brought into play: the Life Force Extractor and Historical Preserve. Two new GAs introduced: the Benevolent Research Center and Trade Nexus. All four new GAs are unlocked by ethics techs.
Introduced new ethics techs to split up the multiple GAs and SPs unlocked by them. Ethics techs now also provide a small bonus, so those who don't get the GAs don't waste their research.
Further optimizing and balancing. My last playtests were some of the most balanced I've ever seen. Sure, sometimes there are runaway monsters and pitiful also-rans, but overall it's pretty good.
All races are still set to AIPersonality 11, or Generic. The Altarians, Arceans, and Korx default to their unique AIP when set to 11. You can still use AIP 8 (Thalan, Human, Drath, Krynn) and 7 (Drengin, Korath, and Yor) if you want to mix things up, but there are special considerations. First, AIP 7 is flawed in that it won't colonize outside of its influence sphere. In order to stand a chance, you need to use Abundant Planets, Abundant Habitables, Abundant or Common Stars, and Tight of Loose Clusters. Then, you need to Ctrl-n until you get a galaxy where the AIP 7s have enough stars within their influence. Other than that, AIP 7 and 8 will perform pretty well. Their research is somewhat flawed (no Xeno Ethics, for example) and they're hyper militant, but they seem to compete well.
Edit to add - While trying to improve the Arceans, I tested their TechTree with regular engines instead of their unique navigation techs. I kept the navigation techs in the standard Arcean TechTree, but also left the Arcean-Eng tree in.

I think that's most of it. Without further ado, here it is:

TechTree Fix v3.0 with Dumb Old Minors: I did nothing to the minor races here. If you want the same dumb minors you've always known and loved, this is the mod for you.

TechTree Fix v3.0 with Smart Old Minors: Same old minors that still won't colonize, but I added code to make them play to the best of the AI's ability. I gave them respectable descriptions, modest bonuses, and changed out the silly race images to reflect their upgrade. Since they can't colonize, they'll send out a bunch of freighters and actually send constructors to grab up a lot of the resources while the majors are still colonizing. They still get slaughtered when it comes down to it, but I've had fun watching them. It's also interesting to see the majors make a ton of regular starbases since there are fewer resources to grab.

TechTree Fix v3.0 with MoOII Minors: The MoOII minors in this mod will colonize and behave pretty much like weak majors. Much larger than the other mods due to the RaceImage and RaceLogo files. If you try this mod, remember to use the "quick save fix". That is, the minors won't start behaving like majors until you save and reload. So, start your game, quicksave, reload, and enjoy.

TechTree Fix v3.0 with MoOII and Smart Old Minors: Why not? If you want a little variety, I packaged up both versions of the minors in one mod. Your minors could be one, the other, or a mix of both. Still be sure to use the quick-save fix, or your MoOII minors won't play nice. I haven't tested this arrangement, but I can't see why it won't work. (famous last words.)

Update 01-07-12: v2 Release

After nearly a year, here it finally is. Details can be found in this post.

v1.1 Notes:

Extract the zipped folders into: C:\Program Files\Stardock Games\GalCiv2\Twilight\mods This is the pathway for my Impule-downloaded version. In any case, put it into the mods folder in the Twilight folder.
The TechTree Fix is optimized for AIPersonality 11 (Altarian, Arcean, Korx, and Generic). AIPs 7 and 10 are pretty much broken, and AIP 8 has certain issues that require me to do another round of optimization and testing for any race that I want to set as 8. I set all races to AIP 11 in the mod. You can change the setting, but it will change the way the AI pursues research.
My detailed change log is included in the folder. I'd include it here for everyone to see, but it's a 15 page Word file. It lists all the changes that I made to the techs, improvements, modules and issues. It also includes every iteration of AIValue for each tech, so you can see just how many times I had to tweak some of them.
Additonal Highlights:
- Fixes broken UP Issue "Add two trade routes". It proposed 2 trade routes, then called for a vote on 0,1,2,3, or 4. That vote was broken and didn't work. It's now yes/no for 2 trade routes.
- Restores 3 Galactic Achievements by fixing Tech Requirements: The Galactic Stock Exchange, Galactic Monument, and Hyper-Distribution Center are once again available with the proper techs.
- Fixes error in some starbase modules that caused attack bonus to be misstated in the starbase summary.
- Fixes Temple of Neutrality, which was a cut-and-paste of Temple of Righteousness. That means the tourism penalty affected good races. Now it affects neutral civs and not good ones.
- Fixes Planetary Defense improvement so it now actually gives +25% Planetary Defense.
- Fixes a number of errors in descriptions of techs and improvements. Unfortunately, I didn't fix the error in the Temple of Righteousness/Neutrality/Evil descriptions. They don't affect trade income, only tourism.
- Fixes a number of errors in the TechTree xml that prevented the entire TechTree from being displayed in the xml viewer.
- There's a few more in there.

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Gank

Any news on an update to this mod please?

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Thank you for working so hard on this mod and explaining it so well here. After more than a year of not playing, I decided to try again with your mod.

Early in the game (so far) I have found Altairian and minor races with scout ships just piling up at the planets where they were made. I wonder if

1) I did not get the mod installed properly, since these races should be exploring?

2) This is a known flaw in the AI that your mod could not correct?

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Thanks for all the work on this mod. I only bought GalCiv2 around 18 months ago: had a couple abortive attempts on the campaign, which I found disappointing, tried a couple of medium-size games which likewise didn't really grab me too much. Picked it up again a couple of months ago and tried it on Immense galaxy, Tough AI on my new PC with max CPU enabled and found it a lot more interesting and challenging. After a while though (and some reading on the forums) I realized that some of the AI personalities had problems.

The Yor grabbed 4 planets and just sat there. The Drengin had little more. The Altarians and the Torians were doing really well however. But the Torians didn't seem to be builing anything larger then heavy fighters and espionage revealed most of their planets (including one I know they've had since early in the game) to have very little built on them. Disappointed I spotted the Space Weapons thread which lead me here and I have to say outstanding work. I started up a game and although i'm probably less than 6 months in it already is looking so much better. The Drengin are relatively close neighbours and you can imagine my surprise (and shock!) to see that they already have 6 colonies to my 3! In my defence I do have a couple more colonizers en route...

Anyway, a bit of a long-winded post, but I'd just like to offer my encouragement for your efforts at salvaging this game. I look forward to further development.

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Quoting petergandalf,

reply 52

Thank you for working so hard on this mod and explaining it so well here. After more than a year of not playing, I decided to try again with your mod.

Early in the game (so far) I have found Altairian and minor races with scout ships just piling up at the planets where they were made. I wonder if

1) I did not get the mod installed properly, since these races should be exploring?

2) This is a known flaw in the AI that your mod could not correct?

Sorry for a late reply. I've kinda been on vacation lately. I don't know why the Altarians would have issues, but if the minor races aren't expanding the first thing I'll ask is: did you do the quicksave fix? In order to get the minors to act like majors, you need to start the game then quicksave and reload before you do anything else. Reloading forces the game to recognize the minors new personalities.

Otherwise, I'm not sure what to tell you. Perhaps reinstalling the mod will help. Hope you can get it to work!

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Hello, just want to throw in my appreciation for this mod! I just want to point out something in your RaceConfigs.xml file for v1.1 that I think was a small mistake. The Korath have two entries for super abilities and no entry for AI personality. It looks like you just replaced the entire tag for AIPersonality with SuperAbility 1 and still left the old SuperAbility 10 entry further down the list.

Looking forward to further updates to this mod in the future! Hope you continue the great work!

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I havent used this mod yet but the Stardock devs should be embarrassed and ashamed at the condition they released this product in. Every dollar they get should be forwarded to people like you who are doing their work for them. There has got to be a copyright law somewhere that grants ownership to anyone who takes a broken product that has been abandoned and makes it work.

So with this mod do I need to make any changes myself to the raceconfig or in game personality settings ?

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Quoting Mankarr,

reply 55

Here I am a month later . . .

Thanks! I really botched that one. Will need to be fixed for an eventual 2.0 release.

Quoting enoeraew37,

reply 56

It should be good to go, with the exception of needing to fix the above mentioned issue with the Korath.

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I've only played one game thus far but it seems like this fix has balanced out the AI pretty well..the races are bit slow militarily (lowering the cost significantly of planetary invasion might be a fix..as it seems to be a motivator for military development), and they dont use non-resource star bases enough. As long as the human player doesnt do an early rush they make for a good game. Hopefully more aggressive military development will come if you are able to fix patch together the evil race AI.

Good work

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I disagree with the ultimate weapons removal because of one fact:

Ship Defenses combined with Fleet Modules.

The reason why I win so many of my games is because the fleet warp modules makes ships who has them the number one priority on the to thwack list. Combine this with end game armor and my fleets are untouchable.

Even with evil weapons, they are insufficient to stop my fleets.

The only real way that they can be stopped is with end game ultimate weapons. And even then they are not enough (for my enemies).

Personally, the end game weapons are there for a reason: if you can hurt the enemy, you are doomed.

Besides: end game weapons are awesome!

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Hello all, this is my first post here. I bought the ultimate edition on impulse recently and have enjoyed it so far. I Beat a sandbox game on tough and thought I was doing good, but now realize it's because the ai is flawed. I found this post and hope this will fix the ai. I have a couple questions though. 1) how exactly do I go about doing the mod and applying it as I am computer retarded

? 2) is this the only mod I need to download to fix the ai? 3) I love to do campaigns! Will all three campaigns work with this mod applied? Thanks in advance for the answers and a double thank you for making this mod!

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First off, thanks for this glorious mod. I really love the new tech tree; the game feels much more balanced. I'd like to mess around with the AI personalities a bit myself, but I can't seem to find the raceconfig.xml. Where is this file located? I see it's included with the minors mod, but I'm not currently using that.

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timfromgoldsgym: 1) To install the mod, just download it, unzip it, then cut and paste the folder here: C:\Program Files\Stardock Games\GalCiv2\Twilight\mods.

That's all there is to it. Make sense? Ok. Then, when you start the game you need to go to Options. In the middle, under Game Options the first thing will be Use Mods. You need to check the box. Then, under that, you will need to Change the mod you're using. Clicking Change will take you to a screen where you should be able to select the mod. Do that, restart the game, and you're golden.

2) This is all you need to play. Hope you like it!

3) The mod won't prevent you from playing the campaign, but I'm not sure that any of my changes will carry over into the campaign game.

GalacticDuck01: C:\Program Files\Stardock Games\GalCiv2\Twilight\Data\English - nuff said. And, you're welcome. Thank you!

Been thinking about the Korath Super Ability/AIPersonality error above, and it occurred to me that it really does no harm. The game will read the first Super Ability listed, which is the one I intended them to have, and with no personality given it defaults to generic. Basically a silent mutation, for all you biology types.

And finally, I've been thinking about GalCiv again. I may just get around to finishing up v2.

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Thanks for the reply! Just to doublecheck though, this mod alleviates the the AI problems with the races correct? (As in they were all set to the AI that was not flawed?)

NEvermind, I just read on the original post that they were all set to AI 11 which answers my questions. Tanks again

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Quoting timfromgoldsgym,

reply 63

Thanks for the reply! Just to doublecheck though, this mod alleviates the the AI problems with the races correct? (As in they were all set to the AI that was not flawed?)

Nevermind, I just read on the original post that they were all set to AI 11 which answers my questions. Thanks again

Yup. You can also set any of the races to AI 8 if you want some variety. Those personalities would be Thalan, Drath, Krynn, and Terran. Further testing shows that they work just fine with my mod.

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This is a very awesome mod.

I was wondering: Is it possible to separate "Fix the stuff that's broken in ToA" into a separate mod from personal balance changes and improvements?

Things like removing Ultimate and unique racial weapons, standardising the weapons costs across types, changing how starbases work etc. probably make for a better game but they also make for a much different game and it would be really nice to be able to just play an unbroken version of ToA.

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

Well that would be more along the lines of the mod I've been working on.

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qrtxian

Join Date 03/2010

+30

Quoting irrevenant,

reply 65

This is a very awesome mod.

I was wondering: Is it possible to separate "Fix the stuff that's broken in ToA" into a separate mod from personal balance changes and improvements?

Things like removing Ultimate and unique racial weapons, standardising the weapons costs across types, changing how starbases work etc. probably make for a better game but they also make for a much different game and it would be really nice to be able to just play an unbroken version of ToA.

My own personal mod is largely like that (except that it does have colonizing minors), but I've never bothered to release it anywhere, especially since I think it overlaps too much with Tolmekian's and MarvinKosh's.

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Quoting qrtxian,

reply 67

That would be brilliant, qrtxian!

Quoting MarvinKosh,

reply 66

Well that would be more along the lines of the mod I've been working on.

Really? From what I read of the changelog it sounded like your mod made a lot of changes to the tech tree et. al.?

It's great to be swamped for choice. I appreciate that very much, thank you.

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

All the technologies are still there, they've just been arranged and re-prioritised and fixed so that the AI doesn't neglect basic stuff which makes their economy go. The order in which they get improvements to build on tiles is fairly crucial, and making certain technologies mandatory in order to proceed avoids the scenario of the AI building military ships without having a decent infrastructure to pay for the maintenance.

In my book, stopping the AI from doing stupid ape stuff goes in the fix column.

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Quoting irrevenant,

reply 65

Thank you kindly. The current version - v1.1 - is as close as you're going to get to just fixing the problem without further modification. Yes, my fixing involved rearranging tech trees to make things more uniform. Yes, that takes a little away from what TotA was meant to be, but even fixing the problems like that was a huge undertaking. Fixing every individual TechTree to preserve the intended nuance was simply outside of my time and energy constraints. All the races still have their unique techs and weapons and whatnot, just rearranged a bit.

I'm not sure if I'll get around to releasing a version that keeps the ultimate weapons, but if people really want them then putting them back in is very easy, though somewhat tedious. I just don't think the ultimate weapons were very good for the game. My weapons changes are intended to keep space combat competitive throughout the game, rather than having the leading race sporting warships with 200 attack while everyone else putters around with attack 5 heavy fighters.

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Hello. I had a couple questions I'd like to ask about this mod before trying it out.

You said that you set all of the races AIs to AI personality 11, however when I am about to start a game and click "edit" to look at each of the races, they all still are set to their original AI personalities. For example: Krynn uses Krynn, Terran uses Terran, Drath uses Drath, etc. What I wanted to ask was, if it shows this, is the mod still going to work correctly as far as the AI personality behavior is concerned? Also, will custom races I have made for the game (using various AI personalities) also work correctly with your mod if I try to play against them? I realize that some of the AI personalities were reported as not performing very well compared to others, so I assume that is your reasoning for changing it. I would just like to know if the mod is working correctly as intended or if I will have to edit the AI personality to something else in the pre-launch menus to get it to work properly both for the main and custom races.

Also, a similar related question. You said that you had changed the Korath super ability to "super dominator" but when I start it up with your mod it still shows as "super annihilator." Is this normal? And its also another reason I'm raising these questions. Before getting the mod, I had fiddled a bit with each race's stats in the menu (mostly increasing their intelligence while equalizing their bonuses and penalties vs. the player), and was wondering if this might have had any effect. The tech mods you have done show up fine in the various tech trees, its just the race and race personality elements of it I'm wondering about.

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

You need to move raceconfigs out of your data folder (My Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor) so that the modded ones are used. If you use any other mods which change default raceconfigs in that way, you will need to do the same again before changing the mod folder you're using.

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Hmm... I can't seem to find a raceconfig.xml in the mod's data folder. You mean to say that I should remove the raceconfigs from the main game's data folder? I'm only using the tech tree fix, not the one with colonizing minors. Perhaps the modded raceconfigs are in the other mod?

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MarvinKosh

Join Date 08/2005

+87

What I mean is the files in the folder I mentioned, with names like this:

Altarian Resistance.raceconfigxml

Those store your current, saved settings for those races. So the game doesn't load the modded ones from the mod folder, as that would overwrite your existing config. Hence the need to delete or move them out first.

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Thanks, got it. But it's still seeming to only work for the mod with the colonizing minors. Perhaps this has something to do with the standalone techtree fix not containing its own modded raceconfig.xml.

Also, another question for the modmaker. If I play the Dark Avatar campaign with this mod will the Korath still be able to use their spore ships? Er, probably a stupid question since they wouldn't be super-annihilator.

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