Yeah, the AI tends to do better when it doesn't have as many different ways of screwing up.

Good job with the Arceans.

The nice thing is, I don't have to choose.  I was thinking of leaving both TechTrees in.  With the changed Nav Centers, you could go either way.  There are some issues, though.  You wouldn't want someone to be able to collect 3 or 4 Nav Centers if you had more than one race with the Arcean TechTree.  There's also the fact that a player could potentially cherry pick the planets with the Nav Centers, super charging their fleets and leaving the Arceans hobbled.  I planned to make the navigation techs no-trade/no-steal to prevent a proliferation of Nav Centers, but can't do much to prevent people from picking them off.  As things stand, I guess I lean toward just letting them have the engine techs.

Another idea I had was to simply make the normal Nav Centers dirt cheap.  It's the same principle that I applied to Soil Enhancement, etc.  If the AI has to be forced into building something other than a basic improvement, then you pretty much need to make it cheap to avoid interfering with their basic development.  There's no real reason for Nav Centers to be so expensive anyway.  I may run one of my final tests with engines vs cheap nav centers just to see.

Speaking of Soil Enhancement, I noticed something very interesting.  I set the AI to 0 and got to testing.  A very nice improvement.  A couple years in, though, I noticed that the Arceans were completely ignoring SE, to the point that a couple of planets were sitting idle with 4 tiles waiting for SE.  Now, I had noticed the Iconians doing SE and HI, so I was confused.  A little later, I noticed a pattern of races that were ignoring SE.  I turns out that it was exclusively the neutral races.  I'm left to assume that the neutral races ignored SE because they knew they would get instant terraforming when they chose their alignment.  Very interesting.

I then noticed that the Torians were also ignoring SE.  I set them to good, so there goes that theory.  Damn.  But wait, I set them up to use the Thalan AI Personality!  So it seems that the neutral races unique AI Personalities are set up to ignore the SE improvements - at least when the AI is set to 0.  I had 1 Thalan, 1 Krynn, and 2 Arceans doing it.  The Krynn and Arceans were all neutral, while the Thalan-Torians were good.  The Torians eventually did start up with SE, so it wasn't game breaking.  In fact, the Torians did startlingly well with the Thalan AIP.

That leads to another bit of good news.  My last playtest had 9 races.  4 were AIP 11 (2 Arcean, 2 Generic), 3 AIP 7 (Yor, Korath, Drengin), and 2 AIP 8 (Krynn and Thalan).  Overall, it's been remarkably balanced and fun to watch.  The Yor and Korath got hosed by location and got wiped out in years 4 and 5.  The Drengin started out amazingly strong, but clashed with the Torian juggernaut very early on and couldn't keep up.  I had a first real taste of AIP 7 weakness.  First, they strongly dislike ethics techs.  Evil gets access to several awesome improvements through ethics, not to mention the other evil bonuses, and none of my evil races will touch it  Oh, they finally get Xeno Ethics, but none of them went further.  Second, their development strategy is sorely lacking in production.  They rely on morale buildings and farms to drive their expansion, leaving factories and slave pits as an afterthought.  The Yor seem to be better at this, but they do it too.  It's why the Drengin just couldn't keep up with the Torians.  They had nearly equal militaries and economies and the Drengin could put out some nasty ships, but they lost the war of attrition.  After a bright start, they were simply overwhelmed by Torian fleets.

That said, it was a great game.  I think I can fix the ethics issue easily.  In v3.0, you could easily set up a game with AIPs 7, 8, and 11 and expect a wild ride.

Making the navigation techs non-tradeable/stealable is definitely the way to go.


That is my current approach. The Nav Center is the equivalent of the HyperDrive and the Adv. Nav Center the equivalent of the Impulse Drive. So I set their cost to 30 and 50 respectively. Still needs testing, though, because I've been to busy restructuring the tech tree files. I moved every tech into TechTree.xml and have only the racial specific customization left in their tech tree files.


Interesting, indeed!

I never noticed that before. Maybe because of my frustration about the way the AI handles planetary construction?

You can clearly see that in it's research behavior, too, if you let the AI handle that all by itself. Quite frustrating to say the least. Especially considering that the Yor should be the manufacturing leader.

So, not only do AIP 7 and 8 dislike ethics, they really don't like Pure Research.  I thought maybe I'd trick them into researching Xeno Ethics earlier, but now they don't research it at all.  AIP 7 doesn't seem to care for Research or Farming, either.  It's a shame about farming, since with all those morale structures they should be pushing for population.  The Yor build Basic Stalks, which give population, but never upgrade them.  It really likes Biology, though.  I'm going to change farming techs to Biology and see if the 8s and 11s can deal.  Not quite sure yet what to do with Xeno Ethics.  Other than that, v3.0 is ready to ship.

In the future, I'd like to make separate TechTrees optimized for the different AIPs, but for v3.0 I'm going for good enough.  Actually, all the AIPs now perform very well overall, so I don't have any big complaints.

Also, the Arceans seem to do just fine with the dirt cheap Nav Centers.  Looks like I'll stick with that approach so as not to take away their unique techs.

You could change it just in the tech trees of the 7s, that way you don't have to worry about disrupting the performance of the 8s and 11s.


Sounds good, but it also is a lot of work. My current attempt goes in the same direction. Like I said earlier, I moved every tech into the TechTree.xml and have only the deviations (cost, name, description,...) in the racial tech trees. The ultimate goal is, to have changes of the AIValue, Category and ID only within the racial tech trees. I need a break, however, as I'm too exhausted at the moment to properly work on it.

Time to go back to my favorite game (a little RPG called Albion).

For v3.0, I want everything to be universal. Since AIP 7 can only be used under certain galaxy conditions, I don't want to make any changes to individual TechTrees that will change research patterns for AIP 11. 

As it is, all the AIPs are handling themselves very well.  I have 10 races going at it in a large galaxy - three 7's, three 8's, and four 11's - and every one is putting up an epic struggle.  The Drengin and Torians were once again the first to clash, but this time the Drengin have kept up, trading blow for blow along with a couple planets in a war that has raged for years.  The mighty Krynn attacked the slow-to-militarize Iconians and I thought all was lost.  Lo-and-behold, the Iconians geared up and held them off, finally reaching a peace deal after minor losses.  The Korath struggle with the Tolmekians, who in turn have wounded the Yor, who are now being set upon by the Drath and Arceans.  At the end of year four, the galaxy is on fire but the balance of powers has yet to shift dramatically. Of all the races, the Yor are in the biggest trouble, weakened at beset by foes on all borders.  Even so, they are still strong enough to resist and may yet hold on.

I was surprised and impressed by the way the Iconians and Tolmekians have endured. AIP 11 is slow to militarize, but pursues balanced development.  All four of my AIP 11's - Arceans, Tolmekians, Iconians, and Korx - looked ripe for conquest by the more militant powers.  When push came to shove, however, they took advantage of their solid development to quickly ramp up weapons research and warship production.  By the end of year four, things are looking remarkably balanced and I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite.

True that.  I started moving everything to the TechTree.xml, but only got as far as the Drengin (and Korath).  The amount of useless and oftentimes broken code in the racial TechTrees was staggering when I started.  Having spent so much time and effort cleaning up the racial TechTrees, I've been amazed at how quickly I've been able to make real improvements that have enhanced gameplay.  Seriously.  It took me a solid three to four months of work to do v1.1 and a year of fiddling for v2.0.  Now, in two short months since v2.0 release, I've been able to check off almost every wish on my list and put the icing on the cake, so to speak.

Am I understanding you correctly, that you are trying to make every tech tree workable by all AIPs? That's quite a big goal! 


It is interesting how a different approach to a problem can lead to totally different experiences.

In the beginning, I only made small changes to the tech trees, because my main focus were the planetary improvements. But after I made up my mind to fix the tech trees, I took one good look and decided to completely rewrite the files from scratch instead of patching them up a little here and there. That took me about two days but, in the end, saved a lot of time. Until recently, TechTree.xml had only the general techs in it. It was more or less the Terran tech tree minus the Terran specific techs. I also organized the techs within the files according their general category, so they are easier to find. The other xml files I'm working on experienced the same treatment. Since then I had to remake them a few times, but still, I'm making progress and that's the only thing that counts.

 

Edit: I just can't leave it well enough alone. Even though I need a break, I took a look at the minor races today.

For some reason, they now have access to all techs in their tree with the exception of the "Xeno Entertainment"-line. The Dark Yor, using the Yor tech tree, were missing only the Yor-specific weapons, while the Snathi, using the Drengin tech tree, were missing all Drengin-specific techs. The Thalan tech tree, however, worked flawlessly. No techs were missing. At least, as far as I could see. Even weirder was, however, that the minor couldn't build any of the Thalan starting-GAs, even though it had the techs. Hyperion Matrix & Co. were just not available in the build list. I was beginning to wonder, if the minors are actually able to build GAs. After another test with the standard minor tech tree, I can definitely say, no they can't. Neither can they build any TGs. Their list of SPs is also limited, but at least they can build most of them. To be precise:

-Artificial Slave Center
-Economic Capital
-Hyperion Logistics System
-Hyperion Re-Supply Center
-Hyperion Shipyard
-Hyperion Shrinker
-Manufacturing Capital
-Omega Defense System
-Orbital Command Center
-Propaganda Center
-Political Capital
-Re-Education Center
-Secret Police Center
-Spin Control Center
-Technology Capital

That's all they can build, using the standard tech tree.

 

Here it is, v3.0 at last.  I promised the weekend, but delivered at 12:45am Monday morning - my time, anyway.  Hey, I tried.

Hope you like it.  I'm very happy with it.  Let me know what you think and if you find any problems.  I'll do my best to fix things if there's a problem, but other than that it's vacation time for me.  I played it off like this was quick and easy work, but I've been spending a bit too much time on it.

I was, in the end, thoroughly defeated in my attempts to sneak in last-minute changes to get AIPs 7 and 8 to research Xeno Ethics, Farming, and Colonization.  In fact, the things I tried made the game worse.  There seems to be good reason for them to not research certain things.  I backed off any such changes and left all the races at AIP 11.  You could certainly use 7 and 8 and have an enjoyable game, but they are far from optimized.

Enjoy.

Congratulations on your release!

 

I'm going to take a look through your files and report any problems I find. If I find them.   

 

Woohoo!  I haven't been playing at all because I was waiting for this one!  Looking forward to seeing a topless Elyes Mue.  Anyhow, thanks!

Great! Can't wait to give a it a go, although I do have a nice game going under v2.0 as ridiculously wealthy Korx (Galactic Stock Exchange FTW) selling to both sides of a Drengin-Drath war, and buying up conquered planets, so might have to finish that first...

All right, time for feedback.

First, you did a great job! I really like what you did with the TGs, SPs and GAs overall. The Galactic Resort is a must-have now, which is great change compared to how it was before. The new additions add interesting flavor to the different alignments, both through the buildings themselves and the tech descriptions. Turning the Historical Preserve into a building that literally preserves history is something I never even considered. I always thought of it as a wildlife reserve of historical importance.
There are more really nice changes, like the return of the Doom Ray and the Nightmare Torpedo, but there are also a few things I'm not so sure about. Not really errors (except three, maybe), but rather changes I don't understand or that could be problematic:

- Korx changed into Super Diplomats. My guess would be, that this was done for balancing reasons, but I'm not sure for which reason exactly. If this was done to make the Korx AI viable in the colony rush, it could have easily been done by making sure the Korx only start with a maximum of 300% trade bonus to prevent them from building freighters rather than colony ships. If, on the other hand, this was done to make sure, that the other races get a chance to build the Restaurant or Bazaar themselves, I can absolutely understand it.

- Warfare Tax. The Warfare Tax seems quite low for being a deterrent for going to war. A race that is able to go to war with another is quite likely to have a economy strong enough to sustain additional expenses of 10 or 20bc.

- Morale bonuses. There are now quite a lot of buildings with morale bonuses. While that isn't a problem per se, it leads to a very bad AI behavior. The AI starts to build improvements with a morale bonus on a bonus tile, despite having entertainment buildings with a clearly superior bonus available.

- Galactic Guide Book. Like I said earlier, turning it from a GA into a TG disables the cost reduction for Survey Modules. To prevent any confusion, you should probably remove that part from the description.

- Eyes of the Universe. For one thing, I don't understand the change into a TG. Maybe because I always understood it as a space observatory and not an invention that can be licensed to other races. The second thing is that line: <F_AbilityFactor>0.200000</F_AbilityFactor>. This gives another bonus of 20% to the sensors of your ships. I.E., if your ships should have a sensor range of 10 due to your bonus ability and on-board sensors, you get another 2 on top. If you left it intentionally back in, okay. Otherwise, you should probably remove it, because it undermines the power reduction.

- Hyper Distribution Center. The HDC uses EntertainmentNetwork.png as Icon and has no Query Graphic. You could use HyperDistributionCenter.png as a replacement. This is something I missed in your last version. Should have been more careful.

- Navigation Center. While it is good, that they are cheaper, I think they are a little bit too cheap now. To be precise, they are the cheapest buildings in the game now. Increasing their cost to 30 would make them on par with other buildings and, especially, Hyperdrive engines, without making them too expensive to produce quickly on all planets.

- Death Furnace. Why has that one been turned into a SP? Was it because of lack of SP/GAs in the Drengin/Korath tech tree? In the same line, the Yor also lack in that regard, and I also never understood why the Distributed Energy Matrix a SP is. Maybe this is related. 

- Re-Education Center. I don't understand the morale bonus. A influence bonus? Okay. But a morale one? I really don't get it.  If nothing else, could you at least explain that one to me, please?


Okay, now to the reason why I started posting at all: Starbase Modules.

At first glance, some well made changes. Seeing the Starbase Hull Repair Kit in the same place I have it, is quite a surprise. Separating the culture based influence modules from the diplomacy based ones is a good move. Changing all the defense and military assist modules to require weapon and defense techs, is also very interesting and removes unnecessary research-problems for the AI (even though it is the total opposite of what I did with them). The change in module requirements for the mining and production assist modules is very helpful for both AI and player, as it prevents any inability to use the modules you have, if you should have acquired a more advanced factory tech than you have available (both to build and to research). As a next step, I started to count the amount of modules: 133, if I didn't miscount. All right, let's see what's among the modules the AI can't use due to the module limit:

- Terror Star modules. No problem. The AI can't use them anyhow.

- Sensor modules. Ditto. Making them only two and more powerful is also quite nice.

- Culture modules. Might be a problem. Some AIs use them, but never to the extent a human player would. So it isn't that bad.

- Speed Assist modules. More of a problem. At least for those AIs that use military starbases.

- Trade modules. Definitely a problem. If the AI builds trade routes, it will use those modules to augment the income. They could also use a boost in power.


Okay, that's it for now. I have some suggestions left, but I'm going to post them tomorrow, because the post is long enough already and it's 1 am here. I should at least try to get some sleep. Even though I know it won't be much, if anything at all.

Wow.  I admit that I was a bit nervous when I noticed that you replied, and it looks like I had good reason to be.  Some things I knew about, like the Hyper Distribution Center and Galactic Guide Book.  I just forgot that in the end.  I guess I'll go point by point here.

I tried it on a lark and they went from terrible to pretty good.  With trade bonuses reduced to 50%, my Korx equivalent started with only +150% trade and still couldn't manage to colonize properly.  Half of their planets were making freighters while the other civs were pounding out colony ships. Diplomat was the first ability that came to mind for them and it stuck.

I didn't think too hard about this one.  I wanted to address the issue you brought up.  Also, I'm assuming the AI is incapable of being deterred by this law, so I didn't want to simply bleed them.

True, but My primary goal was to spice up a bunch of improvements. The AI has a mind of its own in this regard and does odd things sometimes, like build factories over morale bonus tiles. I thought about trying to optimize improvement building, but got a bit dizzy and quickly moved on.  Although sub-optimal, I think overall things are better.

Boo.  Something I forgot.  Looks like v3.01 is due in the near future.  Thanks a lot.

Making it a TG boils down to artistic license.  Changing it at all was a response to the "why build sensors at all, just rush to Eyes and be done."  Now, it's less powerful and if you don't get it first you can buy it.  Just something that came to me.  The AbilityFactor was just unknown code so I left it alone.  Probably gonna nix it in the bug fix release.

Ack.  Made it into two versions?  I even noticed it this time around.  I'm running out of unused Icons and Queries.  I may have to make up something special now that I have to go out of my way to fix it.

Perhaps.  The problem with must-build improvements is that the AI has to build them first.  So, any planet colonized after Nav Centers is researched plunks down the Nav Center before anything else.  A bare planet run by the AI can end up with anywhere from 1 to 5 social points, so you're looking at 6 to 30 turns building the NC before doing anything else with the planet.  That's just too long. In an ideal world, the AI could deal, but not here.  It's part of the reason I left the Arcean-Eng TechTree in as an alternative.

Partly due to a lack of a manufacturing SP for the Drengin, but also due to the fact that they already have a boatload of %manufacturing bonus improvements.  When I fixed up the Drengin/Korath manufacturing techs for v2.0, I didn't do anything with Death Furnaces.  For v3.0, I noticed that they suck compared to the others so I dealt with both issues by making the Death Furnace a potent SP. I worry that it is too potent, but they already have 20%,25%, and 30% structures, so it needed to be good.

On a related note, I didn't do anything with the Aul Incinerator.  Pay 5 maintenance and sacrifice 1 PQ for a lousy 30% manufacturing?  When you already have 2x20%,25%, and another 30%?  Are you nuts?  I just didn't have it in me to deal with it for v3.0.  Luckily, they pretty much never research it.

It makes some sense to me.  Take your dissenters and "re-educate" them to prevent defections.  Since the AI virtually never makes use of that ability, I had to give it something else.  I didn't imagine re-education as a big prestige builder, but I bet the people on that planet will at least act happy when they start hearing about what happened to the last guy that talked about rebellion.

Heh.  I had to put it there because the AI skips the first module on the list when looking for prereqs, and it won't look back up to find a module that depends on something listed later.  I had BattleStations there, but then all the modules dependent on BS were available right away.  I reversed the order of the BS modules, but then the AI would never build BS Mk 2-4.  I needed something that both wasn't a prereq and didn't depend on something else.

In fact, there may be other conflicts based on that problem, but since I found it out recently I haven't checked to make sure every module is below the module it requires.

Crap.  I thought I got them back above the line.  Triage, unfortunately.

But then the bases are in odd locations and don't really help much.

True, but more Triage.

I had to make some tough choices about what to put above and below the line, but did the best I could.  I considered how often and effectively the AI uses modules when deciding.  Weapons and defenses?  They do a great job with them when they're available, and my initial goal was to augment starbase fortification.  Mining? Oh yeah.  Production Assist?  You bet.  Used often and fairly well on average.  Culture? Middling.  Getting the Diplo modules in would have been icing on the cake, but they just didn't make it.  Speed Assist? Great, but very hard to justify given the oddball locations that military starbases pop up.  In all my playtests, I've only seen a few really good ones.  Trade bonus?  Also great, but an also-ran compared to the top contenders.  I just can't think of anything I'd put below the line to bring them back up.

You'll also notice that a lot of the high-end race-specific modules ended up below the line.  Greatest good for the greatest number.  Also, many of them aren't unlocked until a time when not much constructor use is going on.  How often and how effectively, and all.

Thanks tons for the write-up.  If anything seems snarky, it's a fault of forum communication.  I'll fix those issues, wait for more feedback, then put up the fixes.

Have I missed something? Why would anyone be nervous because of me?


That is weird. My Korx usually have no problem, if they start with 300% trade. But if that is the case here, changing their Super Ability is appropriate. Super Diplomat and Super Manipulator are both fitting for the Korx.


Okay, you're right about the AI. I was thinking too much of the player here.


I've been trying to optimize that for four years now, with only a slim success. Therefore, I'm not really surprised that you moved on.


No problem.


Why you reduced its power was clear to me. I did the same. Just the change to TG wasn't obvious.


You could use HyperDistributionCenter.png, like I said. You would only need to change the Icon and Query Graphic of the Hyperion Re-Supply Center. Galactic_Re-supply_Center.png would be fitting, I guess.


Reducing the AI of the Nav Center a little, so the AI builds factories first, could probably help. But that requires a lot of fine-tuning. Keeping it as it is might, therefore, be better.


Okay, makes sense.


I thought of it as a "school", that re-enforces the strength of your culture in the people. You might not be happy with the way the government is run, but you're proud of your culture. The way you describe it sounds more like how the Secret Police Center is supposed to work. Both approaches can work though. Thanks, for explaining your reasoning.


Yeah, I noticed that problem. I just don't remember if I moved the Repair Kit because of this or some other reason. As far as I could tell, every module is below its requirement, but I'm going to check it again, just to make sure.


You certainly did. Sometimes, sacrifices are necessary.


I did notice that. They are mostly a waste for the AI, anyhow, so keeping them in the hands of the player seems to be the better choice.

Don't thank me just yet.

Some more feedback\critique:

- Freighter Command. I really like the economic bonus, it is absolutely fitting. But giving Neutral a identical building, really undermines the uniqueness of the Korx. Replacing the Persistent Trade Routes bonus of the Trade Nexus with a bonus to Trade would still make sense, with regard to the purpose of the building, and keep Persistent Trade Routes as something unique to the Korx.

- Xeno Mysticism. I understand why it has been moved, but I'm not sure if Xeno Research is a fitting requirement in this case. Xeno Mysticism is more of a history lesson and about the cultural identity of the Altarian and Drath, so culture (Xeno Business) seems like it would be more apropriate.

- AI research. I'm not sure if it is my setting or bad luck, but for some reason the AI takes quite a while before it starts researching to Planetary Improvements and beyond. It mostly goes for culture or weapons/defense techs and invasion first. Even if it has finally researched Planetary Imp, it rather goes for Extreme Colonization, than new factories or labs. I'm going to test a little more to see if this behavior continues.


Now, the suggestions I promised. As with anything before, feel free to disregard what you don't like:

1. Political Parties for all Races. Currently, the AI selects the political parties more or less randomly for each race. You could set a standard political party for each race in the RaceConfig.xml, to give them a little bit more personality. Just add <PoliticalParty>x</PoliticalParty>.

2. Thalan Racial Music. The Thalans are currently using the racial music of the Iconians. I'm not sure when this has been changed by Stardock (or why), but you could easily change it back by replacing Race09 with Race08 for the Thalans under RaceMusic in RaceConfig.xml. This is way more fitting for them.

3. Political Parties (again). There are several errors with the way penalties are applied, if the party loses control of the senate. Most parties apply the bonus as a penalty. Others are either using one of its bonuses as penalty but with higher value or they use the bonuses of the opposite party as the penalty. The affected parties are: Industrialists, Universalists, Populists and the War Party. The Pacifists has another problem: they provide a bigger penalty to Social Production than bonus. All of these are leftover errors from GalCiv 1. Seems like there was no general agreement of what the penalty should be for losing control of the senate.

4. Market Center. The requirement is currently set to NeutralHistory. This lead to most races not getting them and an additional entry of the Market Center (for the minors). I suggest changing the requirement to IndustrialRevolution. That way, all of the factory users (except the Torians) would get it, and eliminate the need for the additional entry.

5. Stock Market. Please remove the PrestigeBonus line, as it makes the influence from econ-planets too powerful. This is why I won most of my games with a culture victory back during DL (until I disabled that victory condition). 

6. Invention Matrix. The Invention Matrix costs currently 350 to build, while the Discovery Sphere costs only 275. Either swap the costs or overhaul them completely. The overhaul, in the end, might be the best, because of the extreme jumps in cost for only minuscule improvements in output.

7. Manufacturing Capital. The manufacturing bonus is quite low compared to the cost, the status of a SP, and the power of similar buildings. Either increase it to 50% (like it was in DL), 100% (like it was in GalCiv 1) or something completely different. 33% is just too low.

8. Omega Research Center. Another GA that is just too weak. Consider the time and cost it takes to first research up to Discovery Spheres and then build it. And now consider the time and cost it takes to get the Technology Capital, which provides double the bonus for only 3/4th of the cost to build and is only a SP. Something needs the be done, but I'm not sure a planetary bonus is the way to go. The AI is tremendously bad at properly utilizing them.

9. Galactic Stock Exchange. The current requirement of Advanced Trade (left-over from GalCiv 1 again) doesn't really make sense. I suggest to change it to Interstellar Stock Exchange.

10. Hyperion Re-Supply Center. Similar to 9. The requirement of Expert Logistics makes no sense. Advanced Life Support would be more appropriate.

11. Economic Direction Unit. A planetary economy bonus of 25% seems quite weak for a GA. Either increase it or make it civ-wide.

12. Altarian and Drath entertainment buildings. Currently, they have three weak entertainment buildings: the Entertainment Network, Healing Pools and the Drathian Temple. Healing Pools don't make any sense for them, so I suggest to remove it. The Drathian Temple could use a little boost. If you then also add EntertainmentNetwork as an Upgrade_Target, it will prevent the Altarians and Drath from cluttering up their planets with weak and obsolete improvements.


That's it for now. I hope.

I made EntertainmentNetwork an upgrade target for Drathian Temple and then ended up adding an upgraded temple to Shrine of the Mithrilar, identical to healing pools, though it probably would make sense to make it stronger. It seems to work well enough, stopping the proliferation of three kind-of-rubbish morale improvements on planets. I also changed the display name to just Temple, just because it looked weird to have Drath temples on Altarian planets...

Thanks again for the feedback, Gaunathor, and thanks to you MisterAedan.  It's wonderful to get other perspectives.  I can't do the point-by-point thing this time around, but I really like your suggestions and many of them will make it into the next release.  I didn't even notice or just didn't have the time to even think about some of that stuff.  Nix stock market prestige? I like it.  Man. Capital improvement? Something that occurred to me, but now I'm motivated to do it.  Market Centers? Every race that has the traditional economic branch should get them.  Either through Industrial Revolution or through multiple entries of the Market Center.  If each entry is linked to a racial history tech, then the players will never see a double icon.  I'll have a look see.

The Omega Research Center? Totally forgot it was a GA.  You're right on with this one.  It's something I need to think about.  A first thought would be hey, the SP Tech Cap should be 50% and the GA ORC should be 100%, but I'm thinking that idea might be met with open rebellion.  You're right about the AI having trouble with the planetary bonuses, too. There's also the new Benevolent Research Center that is yet another research booster.  Hmmm.

I share your thoughts about the Trade Nexus, to a degree.  I just invented the whole idea of splitting up the ethics techs and improvements on Sunday, though, so I didn't have much time to think about it.  I needed a GA for Neutral and the tech ended up being Neutral Shipping, so that's what I came up with.  Since I even went and made the econ bonus better than the Korx building, that also does the Korx something of a disservice.  There is, however, the fact that the Korx can get their Freighter Command regardless of their alignment and at considerably less TP expense - 550 tp as opposed to 4000 to research the needed ethics techs.  Nobody can beat them to it, and they don't need to research or build it until they darn well want to.  I didn't want to give the nexus a trade boost because Neutral Shipping already does that, but I guess it didn't stop me from giving identical boosts to all the other ethics tech and improvements.  Maybe the Freighter Command could give an extra trade route or two.  Or maybe Neutral Shipping loses some or all of its Trade Routes bonus and the Trade Nexus gets some or all of them.  It's something I'll need to think about.

My first concern, of course.  For v2.0, I did my best to fix basic research behavior, but didn't have time to optimize high-end research.  As a result, the yellow techs suffered along with stuff like high end miniaturization and logistics.  This time around I bumped the AIValue of many of these techs to round things out.  Overall, the AI has done a pretty good job, though I have noticed that the Planetary Imps line gets less attention than it used to.  I'll have to keep an eye on it.  Offhand, I bumped the invasion techs and I think it may have been too much.

There's also the way the AI seems to universally favor certain research patterns from game to game.  Kind of like there can be one predominant weapon, in some games it seems like the AI loves or hates certain branches like governement or manufacturing or whatever.  A few more playtests and a little more tweaking is in order, I think.

 

Forgot about this, it deserves mention.  I was nervous because you've been a big contributor and I knew you'd find my mistakes and offer substantial critique.  You deliver on both counts.

The only two races that wouldn't get Market Center through Industrial Revolution are the Torians and the Thalans. For the Thalans it's part of their unique nature. Struggling to survive early on, but extremely powerful later. The Torians, on the other hand, don't really need Market Center. Their pop growth more than makes up for it.


Well, you don't have to fear any rebellion from my side. The others, I'm not so sure about.

Regarding your Benevolent Research Center: A bunker doesn't really seem fitting for a research center. Well, except for the ones where top secret military research is going on.


I'm not sure extra trade routes would be a good bonus for the Freighter Command. The Korx hit the trade route cap (12) already way too easily. That could, however, work for the Trade Nexus, as most of the other races don't start with bonus trade routes. Come to think of it, how about a Trade Monument GA for the Korx? Something that boost trade income and gives a nice planetary bonus to economy? This would certainly make up for some of their lost uniqueness, and would fit right into their capitalistic nature.


After some more testing, I can definitely confirm my earlier statement, but it isn't as bad as I feared. The AI still puts up a good fight. But I believe you should take another look at sensors, as I don't think having Sensor Mk IV researched at the beginning of year 2 is what you had in mind.

The test-games were quite interesting to watch, especially the last one. In the beginning, wars were usually declard by the minor races. The Thalans were almost constantly in war with somebody, but still managed to prosper. The biggest empires mid-game were the Yor (16), Korx (16), Iconians (22) and Thalans (23). The Torians were the smallest, with only 3 colonies left. Despite this, they managed to hold on for several more years. The first to go were the Drengin (no surprise there), the Drath and then the Arceans. The biggest surprise was the comeback of the Terrans. They only had 5 colonies left, but somehow were able to conquer several new planets. They received a tremendous boost from one planet, where the Artificial Slave Center was being constructed. The Terrans finished it and went into overdrive, quickly conquering one civ after another. All this was financed by the Korx, with whom the Terrans traded and had both an economic and research treaty. The last races to go were the Thalans and Yor, after which the Terrans won a Diplo Victory, having allied with the Korx by then. At the end of the game the Terrans had 81 colonies and the Korx 25. Date of victory July 8th 2241. (Took you long enough, AI!)


I don't know what to say. This is the kindest thing anyone ever said to me. Thank you!

I'm going to work this newest version into my gaming rotation. Thanks a bunch Tol!

Hello there,

I'm back from my 6 week sabbatical in New Zealand and just wanted to say grats on releasing 3.0 Tol!

Conserning the minors. After my post (6 weeks ago) I actually edited the Minor_TechTree.xml and removed all the techs that the game didn't show and tested it out. The result were 8 minors who all had weapons and ships to defend themselves with. I really haven't seen the minors develop weapons reliably before.

It wasn't that much work to do this (about an hour) and the result was rather wonderful.

I will incude it in my own mod so feel free to copy it once I release that.

 

 

 

 

 

Funny thing is, the difference between Sensors IV by year 2 and maybe 1 out of 10 races getting there by year 4-5 is a mere AIValue of 1.  That's right.  I bump it by 1 and it goes from low priority to first priority.  Same thing with other lines of research.  It's more of a threshold thing than a continuum, and has been the real challenge to optimizing research.

On the topic of Planetary Improvements research being slowed down, maybe it's not such a bad thing.  My playtests only run 4-5 years, but by that time every AI that isn't in the tank has gotten up to Advanced Factories or Manufacturing Centers (Industrial Sectors AIV was way too low, so they stopped researching it after I raised the AIV of the other techs).  Research improvements tend to go more slowly, but the leaders might get up to Matrixes or Spheres.  So long as it isn't crippling, slowing down planetary improvement probably helps their economy and prevents fresh planets from taking months to build the first high-end improvement.

I'm going to tackle the specific fixes we've been discussing, then spend some time testing with an eye to polish things up.  I'd expect release of a 3.1 type fix in a couple months, or something like that.

PS - I literally just noticed that the Category of Discover Sphere is Medical.  Hmph.

That was my conclusion, too. Regarding the last part: I'm working on a suggestion regarding cost and maintenance of planetary improvements (and the tweaking of their AI value), but it is turning more and more into a rant, so I'm not going to post it just yet. Suffice it to say, it is an explanation of the changes I made in my mod, which seem to work reasonable enough for now.


Do you want me to report typos, too? I noticed a few, but they seem to fit right in with the Stardock ones. Grammar, on the other hand, isn't my strong point. Not even in my mother language.


Arrrgh. I knew I should have taken a more careful look through your tech tree. Oh well, it's next on my list.


As promised, I had another look at your StarbaseModules.xml and I can assure you, that all modules are below their module requirements. However, I noticed two anomalies:

- Industrial Replication Center. IRC 2 and 3 still have their original module requirement instead of FactoryAssistOne.

- Advanced Navigation Station. I'm not sure, if that is intentional, but ANS has no module requirement. Not even Navigation Station.


Additionally, two more things I noticed in your PlanetImprovements.xml:

- Death Furnace. It still has the PlacementLimit line despite being a SP now.

- Aul Incinerator. This one has several problems and I'm not even talking about the punishing combination of high maintenance and loss of a tile. First, unlike other buildings modifying the amount of tiles on a planet, it can be disabled by a spy. Second, it can be destroyed by invasion or culture flipping, because it isn't indestructible, but it can't be manually destroyed after construction. The most reasonable solution would be to set CanHaveAgents to 0 and to add Indestructable 1. That way it will be just like any other terraforming-building, which it most closely resembles.


And some more suggestions:

- Capitals. Currently, every race has access to the Econ Capital, but not everyone has access to all of the other three. The Iconians are missing the Tech, Manu and Pol Capital. The Yor are missing the Manu and Pol Capital. The Thalan, Drengin and Korath are missing the Manu Capital. I suggest, to give the Iconians Advanced Computing and change the tech requirement of Manu and Pol Capital. Xeno Engineering would be good choice for the Manu Capital, as every race has access to it. I'm not yet sure for a good candidate for the Pol Capital. Something early in the diplomacy line would be best, but nothing springs to mind. No tech requirement would probably be the easiest solution, but that could lead to other problems.

- Alliance. This doesn't really fit as a government tech. Alliance has no effect on how you run your government, but rather how you work\cooperate with other races. Therefore, diplomacy seems more fitting to me. As making and working in an alliance is quite difficult, either Advanced or Expert Diplomacy would be the best choice.

- Logistics and Life Support. It doesn't really make sense to me, that learning how to coordinate more ships at the same time, leads to new ways of how to recycle air. Wouldn't that be more appropriate for learning how to make better ships, i.e. hulls? The other thing is, that Logistics are available when they aren't really needed yet. This just leads to more problems with the AI. A good way to solve this, is to change the requirement for both to Interstellar Construction. This way, both are available fast enough, if needed, and the AI isn't immediately lured into researching something it won't need in the immediate future.


Okay, that's it for today. Next stop: tech tree files.

Gaunathor:

Typos?  Yes, please.  I did minimal proofreading, despite my dislike of them.  I found a typo in the Galactic Resort where I closed the PrestigeBonus with PretigeBonus.  Doesn't seem to wreck anything, but prevents the .xml from being viewed.

I wanted to comment on the capitals.  The thought occurred to me, but I didn't get around to it.  Your list of who-gets-what goes a long way here.  I wouldn't approach this with the idea that everybody needs to have everything, though.

Drengin and Korath: Remember the Death Furnace? My answer to the ManCap. I'll probably make it identical to the improved ManCap.

Iconians: The Molecular Fabricator can provide a 50% bonus on every planet, so the ManCap isn't entirely necessary.  They can also trade for it if they really want.

Definitely should have access to TechCap.

Iconians and Yor: Don't get any government techs, and thus no PolCap.  After a bajillion playtests, I don't think it would hurt to simply give them the gov techs.  Makes more sense than changing the PolCap requirement.

Yor: Have the Distributed Energy Matrix.  I reduced the maintenance, but now I think I'll just make it identical to whatever the new ManCap is and call it even.

That takes care of everything but the Thalan's ManCap.  I'll have to peruse their TechTree and see what they do have and if anything needs changing.  The only other hole is the Iconian's ManCap, but I'm thinking they'll be fine without it.

I'm reminded of your suggestion to change the Galactic Stock Exchange to Int. Stock Exchange rather than Adv. Trade. It may or may not make more sense, but it would also make the GSE unavailable to the Drengin, Korath, Yor, and Iconians.

I'm thinking it will stay where it is for now.

On another subject, I've been thinking about the Market Center and Altarian/Drath Entertainment Center.  I'm thinking that instead of cramming everything into Industrial Revolution, perhaps they need to be seperated into their own history-type techs.  Why would Industrial Revolution necessitate Markets and Entertainment centers, anyway?  Adding Market Economics and Traditional Entertainment, for example, would allow me to decide exactly who gets what.  Then the Altarians and Drath don't get stuck with crappy, un-upgradeable ECs.

Sounds good. I'm just not sure about giving the Government-techs to the Iconians and Yor. It just doesn't seem to fit them (or the Thalans, for that matter). But it would certainly be the easiest solution.


My suggestion would fix the problem for the Altarians and Drath, too, but your idea is logically more sound. There is an unused Temple improvement in the PlanetImprovements.xml. It just needs an Icon and Query Graphic. You could use that as a precursor for the Drathian Temple.


Now to the main part. Some errors\possible problems I found in your TechTree.xml, together with a few suggestions:

- Historical Assimilation. The Category is set to Ethics instead of Culture.

- Malevolent Economics. "foolish" should be "foolishly". The ID and Category should be Industry and Economics, instead of Culture and Ethics.

- Ultimate Evil. "exploition" should be "exploitation"

- Malevolent Industry. ID and Category should be Industry and Manufacturing, instead of Culture and Ethics.

- Balanced Vision. "not of Interest" should be "of no Interest"

- Neutral Shipping. Should be Category Trade instead of Ethics.

- Ultimate Equilibrium. "dedicated to preservation of galactic balance" should rather be "dedicated to the preservation of the galactic balance". (not totally sure about that one)

- Benevolent Society. "While some other see as" should be "What some other see as"

- Benevolent Research. Should be ID Computing and Category Pure Research, instead of Culture and Ethics.

- Interstellar Construction. The ID should be Logistics, instead of Industry, to keep it in line with other Hull-techs.

- Xeno Industrial Theory. Description needs an update. It mentions Logistics- and Hull-improvements.

- Space Mining line of techs. The ID should be Industry, instead of Logistics.

- Psionic weapon line. "ultiimate" should be "ultimate"

- Arnorian Armor line. "...managed coax it..." should be "...managed to coax it..."

- Telepath PD line. "The reason? Ttelepaths are..." should be "The reason? Telepaths are..."

- Adv. Planetary Defense. "...some additoinal ideas..." should be "...some additional ideas...". The Category should be Invasion, instead of Planetary Defense. The AI doesn't like Category Planetary Defense that much, for some reason.

- Supreme Planetary Defense. The Category should be Invasion, instead of Planetary Defense.

- Hull Strengthening. The ID is set to Weapons. Should be changed to Logistics.

- Unconventional Warfare. It Requires FleetBattleTactics, but the ID is still Weapons and the Category Military.

- Slaughtertoriums. Description needs an update. It says the slaughtertorium is a one-per-planet building.

- Organic Hulls. The ID should be Logistics, instead of Industry.

- Way of the Arnor/DL. The Category should be Manufacturing, instead of Military. (Your Change-log says, you already did that. Have you changed it again without updating your Change-log?)

- Traditional\Specialized Research and Industrial Revolution. Have not been set to can't be traded/stolen. (Would save you the lines in each racial tech tree.)

Racial tech trees:

All

- Advanced Hulls. Is set to ID Industry, instead of Logistics.

- Planetary Defense line. Is set to ID Weapons, instead of Defense. This shouldn't be necessary, if you set the Category to Invasion.

- Interstellar Construction. Same as above.

Drengin_ TechTree.xml

- Hull Stengthening. Is set to ID Defense. Should be changed to Logistics.

- Unconventional Warfare. The requirement is here set to Space Weapons, but the ID is still Weapons. Do you want the AI to keep researching this? The AIValue is still 0 in the TechTree.xml.

Iconian_TechTree.ml

- Self-Healing Hulls. The ID is set to Industry. Should be changed to Logistics.

Korath_TechTree.xml

- Unconventional Warfare. Same as above.

Krynn_TechTree.xml

- Robust Hulls. The ID is set to Industry. Should be changed to Logistics. Is twice mentioned in the file.

- Superior and Ultimate Espionage. ID is set to Industry. Should be either changed to Culture or Computing.

- Industrial Revolution. The ID is set to Culture and the Category to Military. Should be Industry and Manufacturing. Has not been set to can't be traded\stolen.

- Traditional Research. The ID is set to Culture and the Category to Military. Should be Computing and Pure Research. Has not been set to can't be traded\stolen.

Thalan_TechTree.xml

- Technology Adaptation line. Category is set to Research. Should be changed to Pure Research.

- Hyperion Hull Design. ID is set to Industry. Should be changed to Logistics.

- Mechanized Warriors. "canon fodder" should be "cannon fodder".

- Xeno Brainwashing. Is set to ID Weapons and Category Military. Should be Culture for both.

Yor_TechTree.xml

- Charging Stalks. "cybnertic species" should be "cybernetic species".


All right, I'm done. Those were the last files. I keep on looking for typos (both your's and Stardock's), but that's it regarding errors (as long as I haven't overlooked something again).

Holy lists Batman!  At least you say it's the end.  I'm both surprised and not surprised by the typos.  Shows how quickly I threw it all together at the end.

About the ethics techs, although I haven't run any tests with my new ethics techs, I stand by their ID and Category.  I like the way the AI researches ethics techs, so I don't need to go back and balance them vs all the various Industry, Computing, etc.  Now, when I finally get around to some testing, I may find that my assumptions were wrong.

It does help to have an actual list, though.  I'll be happy once I finally knock these out.