I'm also going to look at adding some custom races that anyone can use either to play or play against.  Already started having a look at it in the FlavorText file.  It's a pretty cool thing actually, being able to have all the in-game text reflect on that race in a not-generic way.  It's also a bit time-consuming!

Especially when I try and get them to actually show up and be selectable.

Hey, just so you know, my site is temporarily unavailable!  No technical issues, I've just been so busy that I forgot to renew it, and I almost never check the e-mail that my hosters send to.

I called them and they said they could get it reactivated by the end of the week.

So if you're looking for the mod, I've temporarily uploaded it here.

can you post a link to this site of yours

It's the same site that the top post links to.  It wouldn't be much use me linking it while it's down.

Hi,

Just got back into the game and decided to get the latest version of your mod and give it a go. So far so good, but I have noticed two small potential issues:

1. With the long research times for some of the core technologies in your tech tree (70+ turns), I've noticed taking the creativity (+25%) trait (I believe) really helps to the point that I rarely finish one of those techs without it finishing early. Seems like creativity really helps to the point that it is overpowered. I've never taken that trait before so I could be wrong!

2. I have found it easy to tech trade with minor races to get space militarisation so I can start researching further up the tech tree and potentially get weapon techs before anyone else. I might be wrong as I haven't investigated much due to time, but this could be overpowered again.

I would like your opinion on these potential issues, even if I am completely wrong!

On a slightly unrelated note, is the AI meant to expand as quickly as it does? It seems to be extreme compared to the original game! Either that or I am remembering things incorrectly! I seem to have to produce colony ships at a very high rate, to the point that I do no social improvements and very little research until all class 7 or above planets are taken without going deep into the other race's areas. This also causes issues for a good few turns after all those planets have gone as I need to let the new planets grow enough to make money. Now I look forward to any anomaly with extra credits!

Thanks 

Well yes the Creativity can be a bit overpowered in some places but remember - the AI can do this too.  If you're playing with the Creative ability pick or a tech tree that gives away bonus Creative points, then it's only fair to play against an AI with similar abilities.  This is true whether you're playing modded or unmodded.

I haven't really finished up working on minors, so their tech tree may have easy access to Space Militarisation.  I really don't play with tech trading on anyway as it's too easy to abuse.

Thanks for the reply, that makes sense.

I think I will turn of tech trading because, as you mentioned, it is a really easy way to abuse and catch up in a neglected area of the tech tree!

I have been reading your 'If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong' AAR and have noticed that some of the races were getting military ships within the first year. In my couple of test games, no one got any military stuff, but admittedly those games never made it to the end of year two. Is this normal?

Thanks again

Yeah it's normal.  Since I did the AAR I've tinkered with the tech trees some more so that military comes later in the game.  It's not because I thought that the early game wars were a bad thing, but not having the economy to sustain them meant that the AI's initial military advantage just disintegrated because it was forced to reduce spending.

Hi again!

I've played a couple of games now just to get used to the mechanics of the new tech tree and all has been going well but I have noticed a few things that seem a little strange which I don't know if they are related directly to your mod, or whether the AI is just good at its job now with your changes. FYI, all the AI's are set to tough, and all these happen before the 2 year mark.

1. The AI seems to get more colony ships out, even though I have my capital churning them out every 4 turns with me purchasing some too at the beginning. How do they do it?!
2. I always seem to be last in economy with the highest AI being double my rating. In fact one AI colonised my 'Mars' planet and it flipped within 2 turns and they already had a starport and two economy buildings, obviously bought, but that would be costing them much more than it was making, so how come their economy is still so much better? They only had about 5 more planets than me!

Thanks

I'm looking for an all-in-one mod. Which should I use, Tol's or this mod and why? Also, I can't seem to select a mod folder for some reason in-game.

Well the thing is, with a lack of early industrial and research structures, the AI has a better economy.  The nerf on initial colony means that less research is done by everyone, which again means less progress but less economic meltdown as planets are gained.  Of course their economies will suffer eventually if they colonise too fast.

It's difficult to compete with the AI for planets and I tend to find that I trail behind them a bit, even with the speed advantage that the Terrans have.  I've found that I need to devote a lot of funding to Military in order to crank the colony ships out fast enough.  It is actually very useful to have a military production ability pick or Industrialist party in the early game now.

Basically, I found that in many ways I was holding back because my expectations of the AI weren't all that high.  Now that I'm no longer expecting a pushover, I find my style of gameplay to be a bit more ruthless.

Well Tolmekian's mod has some features that mine doesn't have (such as better minors).  I have focused more on the tech tree and weapons but as I note above I have also touched on important early-game economy issues.

It bugged me that right after you research a tech there may be a new tech available right away that makes it worthless.  I didn't like that, and I didn't like that the AI was willing to spend so much time obsoleting its recently-discovered technology, so I aimed to rearrange the tech trees into branching tiers so that the AI doesn't miss anything too important as it advances, but it gets some use out of what it has researched.  There is more time for it to breathe in between auto-upgrades.

I rebalanced a lot of the weapons, in terms of damage, size and cost, and most recently research time.  Defence modules are now mostly useful on capital ships, although later in the defence tech trees there are miniaturised versions that can be used either on fighters or to provide a small boost on larger ships.

I also shook up starbase modules a bit, removing some in order for the AI to use them in the game, and changing the pre-requisites for weapons and defence modules so that Starbase Fortification techs are basically obsolete.

Try them both and see.  You may need to reset races in between because, for example, I turn the Arcean's speed penalty into an increase and give them a malus to Defence.

As for the mod screen problem, there's a fix for it here.  

Thanks for the info and the fix. I think I'd prefer yours to his as I... don't really care about minors that much. I don't even use them.

Ah, so it's not just me who is having issues with the greatly improved AI then! I always went a little slower than I could, but now with your mod I really need to move fast!

How do you expand? Colonise as you find planets, or go as far as you can until you can't go any further due to range or borders and then settle the furthest colony first? 

I used to colonise the better planets as I go and let the AI colonise the sub class 7 planets in my territory as they would flip soon enough, but they don't as much with your mod, probably down to lesser influence maybe?

Thanks

Well as the Terrans I tend to build the Innovation Centre on Earth and get it to crank very basic colony ships - no engines, just a colony module and some life support.   Though, I may want to revise this strategy now because I altered the cost of engines.

I tend to look not just for planet quality but access to asteroids, because this can be useful for creating a secondary colony ship cranker.

The advantage of having many cheap colony ships flying around is that I can afford to land some on worlds I already own to boost the population, launch with just 1M colonists, return to Earth to refill and then fly to an unclaimed world.  This helps my economy and it also helps with colonial expansion (because the colony ships being cranked at a secondary site need to get colonists from somewhere).

I avoid the temptation of just settling anywhere and prefer to keep my empire as contiguous as possible even if I get a smaller grab, but if I spy a high-quality world far away I will at least try and snag it.  The way I see it, just because another empire claims a planet now, doesn't mean they're going to hang onto it.  Above all, when the economy starts to overheat from having so many colonies, I cut back on the number of colonies making ships and building improvements.  Better to only have one colony making ships at 100% production slider than a lot of them but only running at 33%.

Two questions (one's a stupid newbie question, I know)

How close is this project to completion or is it one of those ones that is complete until you find a way to make it better?

How do starbases work? Am I supposed to fill my territory with them? I come from Civ4 and I have everything else understood except for those starbases.

Well as things stand, the mod does what it was supposed to do.  But as I play games with the mod or as I hear feedback I find there are ways it can be improved further.  It's actually been a couple of months since I fired up GC2 because I've been playing Star Trek Online, even I need a break from TBS now and then.

Starbases are multi-purpose space forts, in a nutshell.  You can only have four of them in a given sector, so you need to choose carefully which (if any) you will build in a given sector.

Economic starbases magnify industrial and research capacity on planets within the circular range, or can be used to improve income from trade routes (best used in a sector far from your planets, where many of your trade routes pass through).

Military starbases can increase the attack and defence of your ships with assist modules, slow down enemy ships with warp interdictors, or speed up your ships with stellar wakes.

Influence starbases can magnify your influence on another civ's planet or mining bases (but minor civs are unaffected) and can also counteract another civ's influence if your planets are being swayed by their culture.

These affects can stack.

Mining starbases are built only on a resource.  They exert influence over the space that they're in like the above three starbases, but only influence starbases can ramp the influence up to frightening levels.  Mining starbases extract that resource, which improves a particular ability of your civ.  They have no other effect.

All of these starbases can be equipped with defensive and offensive modules in case they are attacked, but in the later game these are inadequate and you will need to either intercept fleets before they can attack and destroy your starbase (which eliminates the improvement to your civ's ability) or station a fleet or three in the same square as your starbase.

Then there are Terror Stars.  Unlike the other starbases, these can move, at the blistering speed of 1 square per turn.  Their sole purpose is to destroy stars, and therefore anything in the star system at the time.  They are not used up in the process but since they have no conventional defences, you will need to protect them with a fleet to get them into position.

Cool. Thanks for the analogy. Now I have an idea of what to do with them.

I only recently picked this game back up after playing for a while years ago, and what an awesome job you've done with this mod.

I'm wondering after my current game if there's some problem with loyalty?  I have really high influence and I happen to be situated between the Korx and the Yor.  The Yor planets have been flipping over to me like crazy, but each Korx world has taken a long, long time.  Isn't it supposed to be just the opposite--the Korx are easy to flip because they're mercenary and the Yor are hard because they're robots?  Currently, the Korx have a -16% loyalty modifier while the Yor are at 102%.   Could just be weird luck, but it's happened with several planets on each side; I get the Yor planets shortly after my influence gets to 4.0 over them, but I've been at 10+ with some Korx planets for a while with no results so far.  Or it could be a known issue I'm not aware of, or maybe I'm misunderstanding loyalty.  But if it's a problem, could it be fixed by changing all loyalty bonuses to penalties and vice-versa?  I know it's not one of the more important attributes, but something seems fishy.

Yeah, it does seem to be rather easy to subvert Yor worlds, although I've never compared the Yor and Kor in terms of how easy it is to get their planets to flip.  I would bet on some kind of wraparound bug in calculation.  Nothing I can do about that though, except maybe to nerf the Yor loyalty down and see if that makes them more loyal.  

So long as the influence ratio is 4.0 or greater then a revolt is on the cards, but the chance of it happening is fixed (and decided randomly).

OK, so coming in through the steam sale.  how necessary is this mod?  will i notice functional differences on the vanilla version or is it better to experience the vanilla and then the cream?  Love the game btw.

If you want the AI to challenge you, then the modded game is the way to go.  I've gone from always dominating the galactic map to having to claw my way onto it.  The wars will tend not to be as one-sided as they used to be.  For example the Arceans, with their speed buff (as opposed to penalty in vanilla) are not a bunch of warriors you want to annoy.

The game just crashed on me with this mod when the Iconians built the Restaurant of Eternity-Wonder.

I will try if I can play on from the autosave or if it will crash again.

Did not happen again and most likely was caused by something else, not the Mod.

To the mod: The start feels pretty slow so far but on the other hand there is no way to rush the AI nor is there any possibility that the AI researches relatively useless techs instead of important ones. Simply because it is not possible.

I will see how it plays out in the end but seems more challenging in any case.

How do I install this mod?  No readme or instructions. Do you just replace folders?  Are all versions building upon the others or do I have to DL each one?

Download only the last Version.

It is a Zip containing a Folder called "SWFix_ModV".

Extract that folder into the Path_of_your_GCII_Installation(Default for Steam would be Program Files/steam/steam apps/common/galciv II ultimate)/Twilight/mods folder. (Create the mods folder if not existant).

Then ingame you should be able to select the Mod under Options Mods. After restarting the game the Mod is active for all newly started games.

I also had to download and install http://www.i-mod-productions.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=135 in order to be able to select a mod via options. Obviously there is some bug with the mod-selection-screen that does affect some but not all people and this fixes it.

Note that this mod changes the game quite a lot in order to prevent the AI from mistakes it otherwise could make.

One might also argue it dumbs the game down a little because not only the AI but the player itself will be harshly limited in his choices when it comes to choosing techs and buildings. (A new player is just as or even more likely to make the same mistakes the AI does but this mod prevents him from doing those aswell)

The main purpose really is to make it more challenging whithout just increasing the Boni for the AI as upping the difficulty-level would.

So I would recommend it once you can constantly beat "Tough"-Difficulty and want the game to be harder without having the AI to cheat.

Edit: btw. I really liked one special thing about Tolmekians mod. And that was how starbase-upgrades were for and came automatically when you researched weapon- and defenseive-techs. Having the best ideas from both mods merged could be pretty neat.