You don't need to place each individual file into its original folder. Well, except for the Campaigns, because they don't work from the mod-folder. However, they're not finished yet, so it's pointless to do so now.

The Community Update currently works the same way as all the other mods: extract the zip-file, place the folder Community Update under Galactic Civilizations II - Ultimate Edition\Mods, start the game, activate mods in the options, select Community Update as the current mod-folder, and restart the game so all the changes take effect.

Once the CU is finished, none of this will be necessary anymore, because Stardock will distribute it as a regular update.

I can't speak for Marvin, but I didn't write installation instructions, because I assumed that anybody who wants to help is already familiar with how to install GalCiv 2-mods.

Yes, that really wasn't a good idea, DARCA.

Anyhow, I believe I keep the ETC as it was. Sure, the Defense bonus is redundant, but turning it into a Weapons bonus might make Goods ships too powerful. They already have more space for weapons, because their defences are so strong.

The HoE definitely gets a Pop. Growth bonus. It makes the most sense, and is the most useful, no matter whether you want to build up your tax-base, or want to prepare for an invasion. I'm currently using a bonus of +25%. Considering that the HoE is a GA, this seems appropriate.

I also gave the Alignment Temples a +50% influence bonus. It didn't really make sense to me that they increased your tourism income, but didn't help in getting more tourism.

I'm going to give the Good races access to both the standard Ethics techs and the Altarian ones (with the exception of Inherent Magic and Shrine of Tandis). However, I'm a bit worried, that this might make them too powerful, so I'm going to keep a close eye on them.

I really like the intro. The text-scroll, however, did seem a bit fast this time. I barely had enough time to read it. As for the game itself, it doesn't look good for you. I hope you can turn it around.

Also, yes, the Thalan have no farms in their tech tree. I have no intentions of changing that.

I've been playing a test-game as the Yor yesterday, and it went pretty well. For me at least.

The settings were: large map, common all, 5 enemies (Terrans, Drengin, Altarians, Arceans, Torians), Tough difficulty. Random and Mega events were off, because I forgot to re-enable them.

I chose the following bonuses for the Yor: +25% Creativity (barely had any effect), +30% Economics, +20% Morale, and +30% Soldiering.

I started out a little north-west from the galactic centre. The Altarians were directly west from me, on the edge of the map. The Torians were in the south-west corner, far off from any star systems. The Arceans were in the south-east corner. They had better access to the other star systems, but, as it turned out, that didn't help them much. The Drengin were roughly in the middle of the southern edge of the map. The Terrans were a bit to the north-east of the Drengin. Both races were in the main-cluster of the map. There was another, uninhabited, cluster in the north-east corner.

The colony-rush didn't went well for me in my home-cluster. I only got seven planets, while the Altarians got nine. The Snathi, Dark Yor, and Paulos, also had their homeworlds in that cluster. I tried to expand into the main-cluster in the south, but the Terrans and Drengin had already colonised most worlds. However, I did manage to get three planets, one of which was a real godsend. A PQ 24 with two approval tiles and the Precursor Mine. A perfect place for the Manufacturing Capital. From there, I expanded into the cluster in the north-east corner. On my way there, I found, and quickly acquired, a Military and a Research Resource. I had already gotten a Military and an Influence Resource in my home-cluster. The north-east cluster contained five habitable planets. One of them had a +100% research tile and the Precursor Library. It was only a PQ 5 world, but I still decided to build my Tech Capital there.

At the end of the colony-rush I had 15 planets, the Terrans 10, the Altarians 9, the Drengin 6, the Arceans 3, and the Torians 2.

I considered the Altarians as the biggest immediate threat, because they were my direct neighbours. My attack ships consisted of small hulls, with Kinetic Streams I and Deflectors. The Deflectors weren't the best choice, because everyone else was going for mass drivers. However, I got them cheap from one of the minors, and they did their job well enough due to the extra power from the Military Resources. The Altarians must have noticed my war-preparations, because they were building up a military themselves. Only tiny hulls with Space Cannons for now, but that could (and eventually did) quickly change. Worse still, they were researching Planetary Invasion. This caused me to declare war before I was ready. One of my biggest mistakes. The Torians declared war in response to this, but that didn't bother me. They were too far off, to be of any threat. I managed to quickly take over four of the Altarian worlds, including their homesystem. However, my advance was slowed down, because I didn't have enough troop transports yet. I also lacked the money to afford the invasion tactics as often as I needed them. The Altarians finally began fielding small hulls, outfitted with Railguns and Deflectors. They must have gotten the latter two from one of the minors, because they were still trying to Planetary Invasion. I eventually defeated the Altarians, but it took much longer than intended.

My next goal was to crush the three minors in my home-system, and build up my infrastructure. I quickly conquered the Paulos, but had to postpone it for the Snathi and Dark Yor. For some reason I had began building starbases everywhere, instead of only where they'd be the most useful. I eventually stopped that, but not before I had already wasted a lot of time and money on it. In the meantime, the Terrans had built up a nice army, and were declaring war on the Carinoids. The Carinoids where located in the main-cluster, not too far away from my Manu Capital. So I decided to build a small invasion fleet and send them their way. The Terrans didn't have enough time to get their fleets into position, before I took their prey right in front of their eyes. They responded by declaring war on the Snathi. I gladly took the time to remove the Snathi, along with the Dark Yor, from my misery. This also freed up another Military and a second Research Resource, which I happily added to my collection. The Terrans then declared war on the Arceans, which I should have done a long time ago. The Arceans did only have a small army, but their main-worlds were out of reach of my ships. Once I had build a starbase, however, they were easily crushed.

By this point I had began researching the advanced government forms. I was already making a decent amount of money, but once I had Star Federation, I was practically swimming in it. Even after I was above the 20k threshold, I made a net-profit of over 5k each turn. This was without any Economy Resources or markets on my worlds. Based on this, the econ-bonus from the Collectives doesn't seem necessary, so I'm going to remove it again.

Anyhow, the increase in Influence from the Government techs put a huge pressure on the Terran worlds. Some of them began open revolt. One even rebelled. This really annoyed the Terrans, and, after I conquered the Jessuins, they declared war on me. I quickly finished of the Scottlingas, and retaliated. The Terrans were the strongest of my enemies. Their ships were small hulls, equipped with Advanced Railguns and Shields. My own ships were still using Kinetic Streams I, but I had upgraded the Deflectors to Shields. I had also researched Enhanced Miniaturization. Combined with all the bonuses from three fully outfitted Military Mining Starbases, my ships were still pretty tough. Despite this, the Terrans managed to destroy some of them. They also conquered one of my worlds. Well, re-conquered one of their worlds to be precise. In the end, it didn't really matter though. They managed to hold out for a while, but my troops, combined with my culture pressure, eventually spelled doom for them. This left the Drengin and Torians as the only remaining major races.

The Drengin were my biggest disappointment. It was May 2231 by the time I declared war on them. However, they still didn't have any weapons. They finally began researching Space Weapons when the war started, but that was too little too late. The only reason I didn't totally crush them was, because I couldn't find their last world. I completely overlooked that their home-sector had three star systems in it. Due to this, I went after the Torians instead. Finally. We had been at war since early 2229. I needed a starbase in order to extend my range far enough to reach the Torians. This caused them to send their armada against my starbase, which I was very thankful for. The fleet I used to protect the starbase made quick work of those ships. Shortly after I got a message from the Drengin. They had decided to surrender to me. Good. That saved me the return-trip. My fleet was ready to invade the Torians when they decided to surrender too. How underwhelming.

Well, I expected a little more from this game. The map-generator, however, seemed to have put a huge dampener on this, along with some stupid decisions by the AI. The Torians and Arceans couldn't expand, while the Drengin didn't get any weapons. They did went up the Military branch for other techs though. Still, if the other races had banded together when I attacked the Altarians, they could have stopped my conquests. It took me eight months to destroy the Altarians, so they enough time to build up and do something. There were enough possibilities even later. Well, maybe I shouldn't expect too much from the Tough AI. I usually play on Crippling. I'm definitely going to increase the AIValues for the weapons though.

I may play another game today as the Drath. We'll see how that goes. I usually suck as the Drath, because I'm just not that good at exploiting diplomacy. Hopefully I remember to make some screenshots this time.

I played a game as the Drath yesterday, and it went kind of okay.

I didn't do well in the colony-rush, but I did manage to keep everyone of my back by pitting them against each other. The Torians had the biggest empire with 20 planets, and the Drengin were on second place with 16. The Terrans, Altarians, and Arceans had 10 each. The Yor had 8 originally, but lost one to an invasion by the Arceans, and another one to culture-flipping by me. I also had 8 planets, but managed to eventually increase it to 11. One was the aforementioned Yor-planet, and two more by buying extreme colonization techs.

There isn't much to say about this match. Nothing truly exceptional happened. However, there were two things which greatly annoyed me. The first thing was that neither the Drengin, nor the Yor, researched Planetary Invasion. They did have more than enough time and resources to do it. I had already increased the AIValue for PI to 50, but it apparently is still not enough for certain races.  It's weird though, because they sometimes go for it with no problems, and sometimes they simply ignore it. I'm considering to slightly reduce the research-cost of PI for those races. Maybe that will help.
The other thing was the surrender of the Arceans to the Torians. Not their surrender itself (though I'm still baffled by it, because they had nothing to fear from the Drengin), but that they did it to the Torians. I mean, the Arceans and I were allies. I helped them constantly by giving them valuable techs for their fight against the Drengin. I also had the Hall of Empathy. All of that should count for something, right? Sure, I'm also allied with the Torians. So it's not like the Arceans surrendered to the enemy. But still...

The game isn't technically over, but it is pretty much finished. I'm in the mop-up phase.

I just crushed the Yor a few turns ago, and was preparing my assault against the Drengin, when my allies, the Terrans, declared war on me. Some guy assassinated Jenna Casey, or something. I still think they overreacted, but hey, it's their funeral. They not only have to fight against me, but also my other allies, the Torians and the Altarians.

I used this game to test my changes to the Good alignment, and they seem to work fine. Having access to the Good-only techs from the Altarian/Drath tech trees in addition to the standard ones doesn't seem to be as OP as I feared. The same is also true for giving the Empathic Tactical Center a Weapons bonus instead of a Defense one. Heck, the biggest power-boost I got was from Dark Energy Research, the Doomsday Generator, and three Military Resources. Stuff you can get without being Good.

I'm currently tinkering with the Tech Victory line of techs. Deeper Knowledge is now called Greater Knowledge, and uses the Details from the Torian tech tree. "Because knowledge is power!" sounded a bit bland in comparison. Near Omniscience now grants a 10% bonus to Research, instead of only 5%, and Beyond Mortality now grants a 20% Morale bonus, instead of a Research one. Having proof that death isn't the end should remove some of the daily worries of your people. I also added Beyond Mortality to the Drengin and Korath tech trees.
I'm not quite sure what to do with the Tech Victory tech itself though. You win the game by researching it, if the victory condition is enabled. If it is not enabled, you just wasted your time researching this tech. This never stopped the AI from doing it though. The tech is supposed to be a game-ender, so I'm currently thinking of making it exactly that, even if the victory condition is disabled. I just added a 100% bonus to Economics, Social and Military Production, and Soldiering. However, I'm not quite sure, if that is the right way to go. So I'd like to hear what you think about it.

Do it, make it epic. And work faster!

Great. The quote-button stopped working again.

Quoting MarvinKosh: "Giving ability bonuses on the tech is a nice consolation prize for the AI, but if they're abandoning research into more practical techs to pursue a dead end, well that's not so good."

I still need to test the changes, but the AI hasn't shown much interest in going for a Tech Victory so far. Probably because I set the AIValues for those techs to 10. I'll set those back to the original values and see if that, along with the bonuses, has any negative effect on the AI.

Quoting DARCA: "And work faster!"

As if I'm not pushing myself hard enough already.

Quoting Maiden666: "Hello all, I'm currently playing the mod and have a blast. The game is fast and clear, some stuff is overpowered^^ Please keep up the good work"

Thanks, that's great to hear. However, in what way do you think stuff is overpowered? Good or bad?

As for your idea regarding the Tech Victory, it's certainly interesting. I'll think about it.

1. The +10% econ on Yor facs are overpowered imo. I was playing an all-facs on maso difficulty. The moral you get from the stalks is brutal enough to justify having no fertility clinics or other economic structures. Well, they get Recruiting Centers now.... and access to alot of stuff that was hitherto not in their techtree so... I just think that on medium to huge planets this econ-factories will give about 100%-150% economic bonus (!). Maybe do away with the -10% pop growth to compensate a little for it? 

2. Torians are too strong. I like the courage thing but giving them additional Luck is pretty heavy. A player could reach +75% luck with merely 1 point and Universalists (these were buffed too, I thought them to be well already, esp. in a warfighting game Luck is more important than Defense or Weapon-rating). For example, a weapon/shield with strength of 4 will either roll 3 or 4 @ 75% luck, making an average 3,5. A race without luck would roll 0-4, average 2; ie. alone this luck increase nearly doubles weapos fire or shield absorption. This way you can build ships whose defenses are never really penetrated, making hitpoints irrelevant. However, I think a player should carefully weigh all these options - just the fact that even if defenses are maxed out/high still they could be penetrated because of a low roll should always put some importance onto hitpoints... On the strength of the Torians I have to add that their SA is really over the top, it compensates for a lot of things, for example I never am able to buy/trade planets from them because their population grows so fast that only "Planet X is crucial to our future, we won't let go" whereas I can usually trade alot of planets away from the Altarians (who standardly research all colonization techs and colonize even with only +100 pop etc - ruining their economy)

3. The penalties for the Thalans are too severe. I especially harp on negative diplomatic ratings because the AI cannot trade intelligent. I've seen in alot of game that Drath exploit Thalans by buying away all their military rating (ususally mid game when Drath have alot of bcs). The problem here was that in some examples Thalans were at war (against me) and had only one planet left (Thalia) and my fleets were standing directly before it and each turn the Thalan guy gave the Drath all his ships untill there was no more^^ That's silly, problem is this behaviour is hardcoded, but it could be mitigated by doing away with the diplo penalties. The -50% pop growth is also pretty heavy.... 

4. The re-work of the starting points is very well done, however, a few things appear too strong to me. Esp the research-option: 30% for 3 points whereas you had only 15% in the old setting... and max research increased to 50% (!!!) for just 6 points (usually 4 points for 20%). The thing is that at higher difficulty settings picking everything you can at research is mandatory in order to be able to keep up with the AI (and a no-brainer if we keep in mind there is a hidden research modifier that grows with difficulty...). Things as MP, SP & RP, Econ and Popgrowth are fundamental stats and increase in importance with the planet-count, while other stuff like trade-income etc is rather fancy (un-important). And esp. research-increase can totally alter the speed of a game... I think the research options should be cut back a little (besides, you also buffed the technologist which were already the best option imo....^^)

5. Other stuff could need some buffing: Espionage, Loyality and Repair. Those stats are rather irrelevant, I've never picked them. The changes to the other stuff is very well though out.

6. Wouldn't it be nice to make a few more options in the racial distribution points selection screen available? For example War Profiteering and Interest Rates - 1%-3% for 1 point, 3%-5% for 2. Or Miniaturization & Logistics.

7. There's 3 SA (Spore, Adaptor and Isolationist) who give you the ability to colonize some additional planets but this has no value in the diplomacy screen. Now I remember playing a mod where this was changed, I think the techs were simply added to them. Would be nice to redo that esp. that Isolationist and Adaptor are rather weak SA's.

8. The racial boni for Iconians appear to be too strong, although I would have to play a game (or two) first. I realize they did suck as they were, but maybe they could have something that would support their SA (which is weak), for example additional range.

Temple of Good/Evil etc should have their buildcosts reduced, they hardly generate any money at all. Part of the problem is that in many of my games races don't pick an ethical decision at all (and I'm not going to trade any diplomacy techs onto them...) but this is mandatory for this building to work.

There's a typo in TechTree.xml which is visible ingame:

<Defenses ID="AdvancedStarbaseConstruction">
<DisplayName>Millitary Starbase Construction</DisplayName>

so far so good, set & ready for the next game 

@ Maiden666

1. The +10% econ-bonus for the Collectives is already gone on my end. I originally added it, because I wasn't sure, if their economy was strong enough now. As it turned out, this worry was completely unfounded.
The Yor always had access to the Recruiting Center. No change there.
I gave the Yor a Pop. Growth-penalty, because Advanced Population Acceleration explicitly states, that their pop. growth is slower than that of the biological races. The total bonus of the APA-techs is also 10% higher than that of the regular Xeno Biology-techs. So, in the end, the Yor will have the same pop. growth as a race with Fertility Acceleration.

2. I gave the Torians a Luck-bonus, because they had to have immense amounts of it in order to be able to throw off the much more advanced Drengin (well, that and lots, and lots of troops). You're right though, that this opens up an extremely powerful combo for combat. I will probably remove the bonus again. Still, the Altarians could already do this combo in the vanilla game, because they got +10% to Luck from both Xeno Mysticism and Divergent Evolution (though the Drath only got the bonus from Xeno Mysticism), so it's not exactly new.
As for the Universalists, I only increased their Econ-bonus from 5% to 10%. I want all parties to be worth 4 customisation points. Well, except for the Federalists. They are good enough as they are.

3. I never noticed that diplomatic effect on the Thalan before (or the Drengin, which have a similar penalty). They seem to be doing pretty well so far though (they are one of the strongest races in my tests). As far as I can tell, the Thalan also have no problem researching the Diplomacy techs, so I'm not too worried about this. Plus, the Diplo-penalty makes thematic sense, because the Thalan are completely new to this space-time/dimension, so I'd rather not remove it. Still, I'm going to keep an eye on them.
As for the Pop. Growth-penalty, it's actually not quite as severe as it may seem. The Thalan start out with Xeno Biology, Xeno Medicine, and Artificial Gravity. This gives them a bonus of +25%, halving the penalty right from the start. The original penalty of -30% was similarly halved in the vanilla game, which made it actually less severe than that of the Drath'. This never made sense to me.

4. I used the values from GalCiv 1 as a reference point, but tweaked some of them. +70% Diplomacy for 5 points? +80% Pop. Growth for 6 points? Yeah, right... 
I'm not quite sure what to do about Research though. Yes, it is very important and powerful on the higher difficulty-levels. However, I want to use the same values for it, as I did with Social/Military Production, Pop. Growth, Influence, and Diplomacy. The power of OCD compels me!
As for the Technologists, I only increased their Sensor-bonus from 1 to 2. It's certainly useful, but I don't consider it that big a deal. It's already rather easy to get max sensor-range, in my opinion.

5. I could change the bonuses for Espionage to 25%/50%, and for Loyalty to 20%/40%. Repair, however, is going to stay as it is. Increasing it further will only encroach on the Iconians ability to get +100% Repair.

6. I was considering this, but changed my mind in the end. Certain abilities are just too good to make them freely available. Plus, doing so would reduce the uniqueness of some of the races. For example, only the Drath and the Korx can get War Profiteering. If you want that ability, you will have to invade the planet where the Korx built the Mercenary Academy. Which reminds me, I wanted to add a small Soldiering-bonus to the Mercenary-tech.

7. Well, in Autumn Twilight I reduced the extreme colonisation techs to one for each category. However, this might be a bit too powerful for the regular game, because the races with those SAs could then make full use of the extreme planets from the start.

8. I only gave the Iconians a 10% bonus to Economics, and replaced their 100% Espionage-bonus with a 20% Research-bonus. That doesn't seem too powerful to me. Maybe you're talking about their 20 points in Logistics. That only seems OP at first glance. However, you have to consider that I doubled all Logistics-bonuses and costs. So the Iconians are still only able to put five tiny ships in a fleet at the start. I did this in order to help the AI with its economy problems due to the ever-increasing cost for building starbases.
I considered giving them a Range or PQ-bonus, but decided to emphasise their researcher aspect instead. However, I did give them access to Enhanced Adaptation in their tech tree, which gives a 10% PQ-bonus now (instead of 8%).

Regarding Courage: As far as I know, it only works for ship combat, but I might be wrong. I never looked too far into it.

Regarding Temple of Alignment: The bonus actually works right off the bat. Just build the Temple and bam! Your tourism income is suddenly 50% higher. Having the other races choose their alignment is only necessary for the -40% penalty to work.

Regarding typos: Noted. Thanks.

I think I would have to agree that Luck is a good ability to give to the Torians.  They aren't exactly the industrial powerhouse of the galaxy like the Yor or Thalans, so they need a little bit of luck on their side.  I think that I left things on the defaults and didn't add any extra Luck to the Torians for my recent playthrough, but I'd have to load it up again and check.  If Luck had an impact on my ability to just barely hold back the Yor, it's subtle.  But I think things definitely started to shift in my favour when I started to build ships with defences.  Whoops.  Little spoiler there.  Still didn't make my ships invincible though.

I also found that although the Super Breeder ability gave me an incredible early-game advantage, it quickly loses its potency once population is maxed out.  Sustained invasions (two per planet on the same turn) can take Super Breeder planets, and the Yor had no trouble throwing troop transports at me.  It did prove to be useful once again when I started invading back, but not overly so.  I'll have to play out the rest of that game to see.

Certain ability picks are always going to present an advantage to player or the AI - that's sort of the charm of the game, right?  You don't see me complaining about the Yor's ability to turn the skies dark with ships because I assigned them bonuses to Military and Social - meaning, they can build their Collectives quickly, and then churn out ships even quicker than before.

I'm a little bit torn with regards to spies.  I only use them to root out enemy spies and gather intel, so I would be okay with a nerf to Espionage ability points (which would reduce the amount the AI spends on them).  But the AI does tend to need them more than me in order to combat enemy spies.

I think that if a race gets into a deficit because of losing planets, well, they had problems with their economy even without taking spy expenses into account.  A player can always use both spies and troops to rob the other races of their ability to make money, so allowing the AI to maintain espionage spending could be seen as a means of blunting an attack on one of those fronts.

I'm not wildly enthusiastic about the amount that gets spent on espionage.  It is capped at a proportion of a race's income, so when you reduce their income by taking a planet, spending on espionage will decrease proportionately.  But it is still giving them problems.  Something to definitely keep an eye on, anyway.

I think that reducing the range of targets for spies to sabotage is an excellent idea, as well.  Economic structures, factories and labs should be the main targets.  I've certainly never seen the AI bother my farms or morale structures, which suggests that their espionage placement priorities are coded with that in mind.

I agree with Gaunathor and Marvin.

odd bug...

May be it doesn't work because the weapons used for the transports don't exist anymore when we changed stuff? We know it is weapons related, just have use the process of elimination.

You have to know the game can't be perfect, some things may seem wrong one moment but improve something else the next. Don't worry to much about it, anything.