ARC means you'll be tinkering with personalized files to change your/your enemies Super-Ability (SA), homesystems, personalities, ethical alignments & some other stuff. Most likely you'll need it for Stock Races.
Custom Races can easily be changed using the "Create New Opponent"- or "Edit"-buttons which you'll see in the Enemy Selection-screen during a game's setup.
Don't change any other stuff otherwise the MV may trip a cheat-flag. Usually, the game will inform you about this right upon map-generation ["this raceconfig is invalid...."], but sometimes it doesn't.
If you're unsure, simply end a game without uploading it to the MV - then reload the respective endgamesave-file. On load, the game should inform you with another message ["this game has been flagged with the cheater-flag..."]
Whenever you upload a game to the MV, there will be a related [example:] "20160319175403778.xml"-file generated (in the MyGames/VersionName/Metaverse-folder) containing all the info which is submitted to the MV:
<Metaverse>
<Game Name="GalCiv2">
<Version>v2.01 Dark Avatar</Version>
<Years>0</Years>
<PlayerName>
<![CDATA[Agt. Smith]]>
</PlayerName>
<CharacterID>21996</CharacterID>
<GalaxySize>18</GalaxySize>
<GameID>2016031922392561</GameID>
<Difficulty>11</Difficulty>
<Score>102900</Score>
<EndGameMode>1</EndGameMode>
<DataChecksum>LpfLZWg0ms3RaLRaFIpFone73W4gkMhkvd5vN2Ox</DataChecksum>
<Race name="The Player">12</Race>
<TechTree>0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|10|11|26|27|28|29|36|37|41|42|43|46|47|53|196|197|198|199|200|201|206|216|217|240|254|262|263|</TechTree>
<AbilitiesBonus>40|0|0|20|20|0|20|30|50|5|0|65|0|1|1|5|0|0|0|0|0|0|120|0|0|25|0|0|15|0|0|0|0|1|0|0</AbilitiesBonus>
<Alignment>55</Alignment>
<TotalPopulation>8101</TotalPopulation>
<SerialNumber>XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX</SerialNumber>
<OriginalSerialNumber> XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX </OriginalSerialNumber>
<DarkAvatar>0</DarkAvatar>
<Campaign>NoCampaign</Campaign>
<CustomMap>NoCustomMap</CustomMap>
<Scenario>NoScenario</Scenario>
<Cheater>0</Cheater>
<FileCheckSum>7nc7HXK5XC693u/3DofD4XU6nU57vd5vNRqNRt3u</FileCheckSum>
</Game>
</Metaverse>
A <Cheater>1</Cheater> tagline means you're game has been flagged, which looks like this in your MV profile:
which doesn't automatically mean someone tried to cheat -esp. on low-score Year:0 games- because the MV wrongly flags games which are ended between the first 13 turns. (AFAIK it's possible to end a game as soon as March 8th)
Also, and esp. in TotA, some numbers shown in the <AbilitiesBonus> line can reach absurdly high - because ingame they actually are negative (because of negative racials or lost elections) & the game turns then into an integer .
But back to ARC - all required files are located here: ]
(the game only creates them on use, not per default, that is, with a new installation there won't be any of these files)
C:\Users\...\Documents\My Games\GalCiv2 *.raceconfig-files
C:\Users\...\Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar *.customracexml-files
C:\Users\...\Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor *.raceconfigxml-files
Dread Lords:
You can change [presenting only the ones somehow related to score...]
<Alignment></Alignment> [0-100 = evil-good]
<Homeworld></Homeworld> [see also]
<Homestar></Homestar> [see also]
tags, and it'll work only for the player.
This is not much, which makes DL the most challenging & fair but least rewarding version.
Dark Avatar & Twilight of the Arnor: (also the 3 lines above)
<AIPersonality></AIPersonality> [7,8,10,11 - for MV 8 is best IMO]
<Aggression></Aggression> [0-100 = peaceful-aggressive]
<FinancialResources></FinancialResources> [10-200 = less-more]
<CPUUsage></CPUUsage> [0-100 = less-more]
<SuperAbility></SuperAbility> [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
Financial Resources is automatically adjusted by the difficulty-settings and defaults to 170 for Suicidal. It's possible to set it to 200.
Aggressive AIs are known to bully others around & swiftly declare war if those don't obey, the "-militaristic" diplomatic penalty also shows up on them constantly. Peaceful AIs don't show this behaviour and instead get a positive "+peaceloving" diplobonus for anyone else.
AIPersonalities; this is a huge topic in itself. Basically 4 main personalities exist which do their stuff ingame quite differently.
- AIP8 is the most conservative when it comes to their own money (which you're looking for rich AI that offers lots of bcs for your technologies, should be picked). AIP8 ignores research into defenses, picks one weapon-branch & stays with it (so you may get a good weapon from it over time) and also doesn't prioritize diplomacy. It also builds not many Scouts.
- AIP7 in DA & TotA 2.042 is handicapped in its colonial rush - don't use if you want it colonize the galaxy for you. Though it does build up planets quite nice & also does good research.
- AIP11 is quite erratic. It researches multiple branches of weapons alternatively & also any defenses if someone is hostile to them. It constantly overquickbuys its budget & manages its balance badly, it doesn't really build up planets. It releases alot of Scouts though.
- AIP10 is kind of a combination of AIP8 & AIP11, doesn't stand out individually so much. I don't like them because they seem to value ships very high (demand high prices for Scouts)
Super-Abilities:
- 0 - Diplomat
- 1 - Dominator
- 2 - Organizer
- 3 - Warrior
- 4 - Breeder
- 5 - Isolationist
- 6 - Trader
- 7 - Manipulator
- 8 - Hive
- 9 - Adapter
- 10 - Annihilator
- 11 - Spy
Un-doing ARC:
- Stock Races can be cleared in the race selection screen. The game then defaults this race to reflect the stats detailed in the "RaceConfig.xml"-file which is part of the installation. You'll need to save these changes which will overwrite the respective xml-file in MyGames-folders.
- Any files from my ARC-packs are set to 'read-only' so the game won't overwrite them by accident.
- All data stored under the 3 resp. MyGames-folders can be completely erased, the game then creates them anew with looking up the required information in various installation-files.