I have some questions if anyone can help me.

I have installed the mod, but in the video it is said that unless you clear your custom races, the mod will not work correctly. I have done that, but how can i be sure that AI now plays to best of his abilities ? Is there any way i can test that, or what is the best way to check if he does ? If he researches everything maybe, if he makes fleets ? If he takes planetS ?

Second question i have is this, i have created a game on Painful, and i have done end turn for long long time until computer (small map) came and actually conquered me. When he did, his best ship had attack around 30, and zero defense. In general i have notices that they dont build ships with any defense, but that was only one game and i wasnt actually playing. How come ? Do they build ships that have also defense bonus, or they copy your ships design when u make them ? Cause it is really booring to play if they dont make strong fleets so i can counter their ships weapons with my defense and wise versa.

I also notices that computer rarely builds any economy or morale space stations, which prior to mode he did constantly, that is designed in mod to behave like that ?

And how difficult is to play if you go even higher difficulty, does ai make for any challenge ?

Thanks for your input

And i have one more question, after loading the mod, do i need to change values for each race before i play (like + to economy, to morale, fundalist instead of war party etc..) or when i start the game, i simply change values for what kind of map i want to play and go next next for races and values for each race are modified based on mod ?Is there any way to check if these values were really read from the xml ?

Thanks

Samaraiu,

I'll do my best to answer your questions.

To ensure the AIs work to the best of their abilities setting them up yourself is highly recommended. However, if you don't the game will assign abilities to them, usually focusing on morale, economics, etc. If you want to check up on the AI you'll need to enable cheats. Check out the Galciv 2 WIKI for more information on how to enable cheats. Cheats allow you to take over an AI player and check their progress. They also allow you to reveal the entire map. Keep in mind, the CU team did this hundreds if not thousands of times. 

Your second question. Some AIs do not research defenses and no AI will research defenses unless there is a reason to do so. If you click away turns until you're invaded the AI never encounters a player using weapons and sees no reason to research defenses.

Your third question. The mod doesn't modify starbase construction behaviour. It does modify available modules. In fact, it fixes a problem with them giving the AI access to all modules. What the AI does with them is not something we can alter. Also, there are no morale space stations. I think you meant influence.

Your fourth question. How difficult is the game at higher levels. I have yet to beat the game at crippling. Before the mod I had no trouble doing so.

Your fifth question. No you do not need to setup each of your opponents to have a fun time playing.

MabusAltarn, i am new to this game so thanks for answering. Yes i have ment influence starbases :

So if i understand correctly, i unzipped the mod, then i removed all custom race configs as in videos, this way ensuring the mod works correctly, and after that i can change every race abilities to give them more points to economics, morale, then save the race, and the mod will still work correctly ?

Cause at first i thought that after you remove those custom race configs so mod works correctly, u cant assign ability points to them again cause race configs are then recreated, but the way i understand nowis that you only need to do this once you load the mod for the first time, then you can change abilities and put those changed races against you as AI.

And one more thing, based on your experience:

Which are the best abilities to give to AI ?

Absolutely! The reason you must remove the old customization is because these customization's contain data from the unmodded game which interferes with the new version of the game.

As a rule you can state: what makes it easier for me will make it easier for the AI as well, but more so. The first abilities that come to mind are morale, economics and population growth. These three help the AI develop its early economy but keep in mind that at higher difficulty levels this isn't a real issue since the AI gets economic bonuses.

What you could do is to do away with the diplomacy-penalties for the evil-aligned races (also Thalans) in order to level the diplo-playing field in the early stages of the game. Give them other penalties (such as loyalty, influence etc) instead or shift the diplomatic penalty to the mid-stage of the game (nerf some diplo-techs for them).

The reason is that the AI is much more reluctant to give away planets when these show negative (red) income value, have very little population and not many buildings on them - and this is very likely to be the case during the colonial rush. In the later stages of the game, once population had time to grow, the AI won't give away planets anymore, even if you are SD or have a strong diplomatic ability. The AI Personality also determines the value of planets differently, for example Altarians give up planets more easily.

Actually, this could be easily exploited by the player and it did make playing SD an easy win if there were 1 or 2 suitable enemies on the map (esp. Thalans and Altarians) because here the player can ignore colonization, go full research, drain the AI's out of their planets via techtrade, and end up with most planets + best tech in midgame. It was even possible in vanilla but now it's far more worse because the discrepancies in starting diplomacy have been increased....

I would rather see this fixed in the exe. Alternatively we could increase the number of colonists on colony ships. That way new colonies will start with a higher population and the AI might be more reluctant to sell off its planets.

E.g. 1 bln colonists instead of 500. 

Back when I proposed upping the colony pod to 500 I also made some tests with 1000; 750 etc... it was too much.... basically 2 problems arose:

- Strong manufacturing worlds such as Thala will sometimes be emptied to a real low inhabitant number because the colony ships take much more away than could be bred. Considering there's usually the Economic Direction Unit there (Thala should be a powerhouse in industry as well as economy) the planet was deep into negative income (making it a candidate to be traded away...) 

- Most initial colonies wouldn't even fill up the 1000 colony pod to its maximum because the time was too short for sufficient population to grow.

Both cases grow worse with increased difficulty level because there prod + economy get bonuses but pop growth not.

Besides, we'd need to rebalance the Troop Mods as well otherwise the player can simply make Transports using a single Troop module and the rest only colony modules as a cheap substitute for the Advanced Troop Mod.

One thing that would help greatly would be if Frogboy would change the starting colony ship to hold maximum colonists, because the colony that is created by this ship will spawn alot of ultra low colonys who all are subject to become exploited by planet-trade (and they also impact the AI's economy as well negatively, and for quite some time, because they take forever to grow into self-sustaining...)

I have no idea how that could be fixed in the .exe short of totally disabling the option, but that would also erase other sides to it like giving away planets to find a peace agreement, treaty exchange or satisfy bullying AIs when there's no money available. This stuff actually seems good balanced.

Weapons Appendix,  for Mabus' Guide:  (X is whatever number you choose to give it)

X Weapon Lines

Whether or not you plan to live by the sword,  you should be aware of some slight differences in the three available weapon lines (Beams, Mass Drivers, and Missiles).

First,  weapon technology does not develop in what you might call a "smooth" fashion.   Most of the time you'll see some incremental improvement,  but on occasion there are rather sizable leaps in power, size,  or cost.  

Second,  there is no one-size-fits-all "best" weapon technology.  Each weapon line will have its share of the spotlight at different stages of research.   It's a balanced unbalanced approach and serves to make the game a little more interesting.

Third,  each weapon line has a few distinct traits throughout all tech eras:

* beam weapons start small and get bigger over time,  culminating in the massive Doom Ray.   They have moderate power for their size and cost about average to research.

* mass driver weapons start mid-sized and get smaller over time.   They have lower power for their size,  but they're also the cheapest weapon line to research.    Armor (the best defense against mass drivers) is also a little tougher to research than other defenses.

* missile weapons start large and miniaturize a little over time.  They have the highest power for their size,  but they're also the most expensive weapon line to research.   Chaff (the best defense against missiles) is also a little easier to research than other defenses.

X.1 Civilization specific weaponry

Some civilizations go off the beaten path and develop their own unique weapons technologies.  These are usually -- but not always -- better than what other civilizations will get for a similar research cost.

X.2 Ethos specific weaponry and defenses

Civilizations which follow an Evil path can research weapons of unspeakable horror... and effectiveness.    Similarly,  civilizations choosing to align themselves with the forces of Good will find unique and powerful defensive technologies available to them.

I think that's about all that needs to be said.   I didn't want to bog it down with too much detail,  but I think I've covered all the bases reasonably well.

I would like this. I cannot say anything about side effects, but for sure halving the diplomatic penalty for those races would make diplomacy not too much overpowered for SD player.

These two combined should improve the situation a lot. In my short experience I've found many times planets (Iconian planets I think) with just 5.000 to 10.000 people, and these planets were valued by the AI less than a fighter ship.

Wouldn't "Point Defense" be more fitting? At least I'm under the impression you're reffering to a branch not a single tech....

I also remember some instances were Thalans were exloited by Drath midgame, Thalans were on the loosing side of a galactic war and their planets were constantly invaded. They've given alot of these away (also ships). In general a too great discrepancy in diplomacy just makes the AI becoming exploitative.

Whoops - yes.  It would definitely be more fitting.   Nice catch.

@Silas. Looks good. I've changed Chaff to point defense and updated the manual. I'll add some images later. Thank you for writing this down.

@Maiden. Alright so increasing the number of colonist on a colony ship is not a quick fix. Thanks for explaining.

Concerning the trading of low population planets. We're not going to fix this by removing the diplomacy discrepancy that exists between the included civilizations. Clever point assignment combined with targeted research will cause this problem to resurface anyway.

Best solution: block planetary trade for a year. This works for treaties, it will work for planets.

Very well, that seems to be a spot on solution

On another note, does anyone know when Frogboy is coming around again? The Update has been freezed for a huge amount of time now, I was under the impression it was gonna be become official soon, but seeing now the weeks pass by wihout anything happening I wonder what we could have done in the meanwhile.... (?)

I've send an E-mail to Yarlen about this last saturday. No response yet.

I had a response from Yarlen. He'll ask Frogboy to look into planet selling.

Good news 

Hi,

I just recently bought galciv2 ultimate over Steam.   Did it include this (update/patch/mod)? If not? Will it ever be an official patch?

Hi Ragic,

at the moment this is just a mod, so you have to install it yourself following the instructions provided.

It will be part of an official patch (sooner or later), but according to what the mod authors say, it is still not clear when this will happen.

I'll see if it I can create a full installer. Not sure when I'll find the time but I'll put it on my todo list.

thanks for the info

Any idea why some of us have CTD when applying the CU exe? No problems with original exe on win7 64. Sorry for posting it here, there is a separate thread, but no one answered. 

Did you try to download it a second time? Maybe it's just a corrupted download.

In which directory did you put the new exe?

Are you starting the game by a shortcut on the desktop? Try to run directly the exe file in its own directory, just to be sure you are not using a bad shortcut.

I will try new, clean installation and download the exe again. Could installing it to Program Files (x86) cause the problem? I will try different folder, just to be sure.

I forgot to ask you: which version of the game did you buy? Is it the ultimate edition? And is it the steam version?

Good choice, better to use a dedicated folder for games rather than program files, it can give troubles.