I've posted a new version of the mod.  There are a lot of changes in there but in particular I've added a whole new line of factories for the Altarians, the Torians have two grades of mining improvement now and their version of Xeno Factory takes slightly longer to build (and looks different).  Both the Torians and Altarians now have Technology Progression research to do.

Also, I've made some changes to defensive and offensive starbase modules, so that you're rewarded for doing weapons and defence tree research.

A small update, basically kicking the Torian mines down a notch.

Please use my improvements pack your more than welcome to use it for your mod you can download it here.

LINK

Already using them in my game

New planetary icons for tile bonuses and updated improvements icons thanks to your collection!

Marvinkosh i have installed and am trying out the mod and like what i see. However i have one slight 'bug' and one question for you.

Bug: - Techs that are available to research are not all showing in the left hand window.

So far the issue seems to be with the 'Core Technologies' you have implimented.

Question: - Factories?

With the exclusion of an initial factory from the initial outset i foresee an issue with the Terrans that they are going to be fast out-rushed in the initial colonization push as it takes 12+ weeks to get a new colony ship out. Now this may be reduced by playing with the initial setup screen to give yourself more military production but i was wondering if this was intentional?

The list of projects on the left looks normal for that stage of the game.  Core Technologies essentially take a bunch of techs that originally branched from Planetary Improvements or Artifical Gravity, group them up, and effectively make them a requirement in order to progress through the tech tree.  Core Technologies I for the Terrans is Xeno Economics and Xeno Trade Centres.  Which is why you don't see 'Core Technologies I' over on the left, it's just a group name.

The lack of factories early on is intentional.  It's to give the races time to develop an economic base while they're doing the colony rush.  If you give them too many money-sucking improvements early on  they spam them into planets, then they end up spending too much, they yank the production slider all the way to the left and the economic development gets shot to hell.  The Terrans and other races actually do just fine without the basic factories, there have been games when they've grabbed the most colonies.  But as always starting position and the availability of habitable planets can change a race's fortunes greatly.

When you research Xeno Industrial Theory that's where you'll get your first factories, you'll also get a factory Super Project that some other races (e.g. Torians) don't get.

OK great. Thought it might have been an oversight but happy to learn it wasnt.

Oh yeah.  I kinda goofed with some of the changes to starbase modules.  See the top post for a new version.

OK will do. So far seems to be running well with no major problems. Took a bit of getting used to playing it a different way from the way i have always played it but now am enjoying the mod. Finding that most of the AI's i am up against are all colonizing well.

Yeah it does take a bit of getting used to.  Sometimes I find the early tech tree a bit confining, I'm so used to zipping quickly to Space Militarisation and getting lots of Recruiting Centres up.  Now it's more likely that I go for Xeno Medicine first, it's not quite as big of a growth boost but it does have the advantage of being across the whole empire instantly.

I just thought of something you may want to consider when adjusting your trees and improvements and such.

The AI's difficulty determines the bonuses or penalties they get to their stats, but the CPU usage determines how many turns ahead they plan out their strategy.  If it lets them plan far enough ahead, it's possible that they are accounting beyond "this crap and its improvement are high value but useless, I'm going to research something else."  At high enough cpu usage they may think "this isn't valuable or useful, but the next one is".  That would explain the effectiveness of the gatekeeper techs.

In which case, have you been testing at all degrees of AI cpu usage?

No, just the maximum setting.  I wouldn't recommend anyone play with it set differently, to be honest.

Just so you know, may be a delay in updates this week (though I hadn't planned anything yet).  Been having computer trouble, got a new part ordered to try and fix it, but it won't get here until later this week.

As it turns out the new part didn't help.  So I'm stuck without a working computer until I figure out what is actually wrong.  I don't know how much progress I can make with testing and modding if I have to go back and forth like today.

Anyway I'll post when I can.

Got a new motherboard in to try and sort the problem.  Going to fit it later today, maybe.  Fingers crossed I'll be back to modding by tomorrow.

So after a mixup with the motherboard ordering (I got an AM3 board instead of an AM2+ board) I've restored the original hardware that was in the machine six months ago, and things are doing fine.  I don't know what the impact on my galaxy setup will be, guess I'll have to load up and find out, but I shouldn't have too much trouble modding so long as nothing else fails.

I've lined up a new processor (and a video card), but I haven't ordered yet.  I sorta lost my enthusiasm for this computer building stuff when I realised that my processor just wouldn't fit in the slot.

I've finally got a new processor and graphics card on the way.  I haven't been working on the mod, unfortunately, I've been kept busy with a couple of other projects.  But when I have some time free with the new computer I will get back to work on it.

Yay someone is working on this! How are you editing the tech trees and whatnot for the individual races? I guess elemental and that MMO arnt the only thing Stardock released totally broken. Wonder how far back the trail goes for Mr "Gamers Bill of Rights" aka Fraudster.

I'm editing the XML files with the power of my mind.

Nah only kidding, there's a Tech Tree Editor included with Twilight of the Arnor.

Hi MarvinKosh, first of all I just wanted to say that this mod has given Galciv a new lease of life for me!

I really like the changes and wanted to drop in a little user feedback, and then ask the forum for some tips with certain races.

The Altarians are frackin' formidable now. Of the five games I have played with your mod, they have been monstrously powerful in two, researching like mad, colonising extensively and building some seriously intimidating ships. The current game is going the same way and I have decided to nip it in the bud with an early invasion (they were absent for one of the other two games, and I played as them in the other, where the restructured tech tree was an interesting added challenge but eventually paid off).

The Terrans are Altarian-lite at the moment. They also colonise heavily, and they do very well in the early and middle game but seem to dislike building medium hulls, instead focusing on lots and lots and LOTS of fleets of small hulls, so they end up being conquered or surrendering.

The Torians seem to get off to a good start before crashing and burning, but I think they have suffered from bad starting positions - they are doing better in the current game and were fine when I played as them.

The changes to the defences have been key to my military strategy in every game, and the AI seems to use them intelligently too, even quickly researching and switching to, say, shields when my beam-using Altarians become a bigger threat than the missile-using Arceans.

I don't know how extensive your changes to the others were, but in summary:

Yor, Iconians, Thalans, Krynn and Korx doing well so far, although the Korx have a quirk where they only seem to build morale structures, econ structures and super projects, even though they have researched the techs. In my Altarian game the Yor outplayed me for a long time: grabbing colonies from under my nose, successfully invading my worlds, and devastating any ships I built to oppose them.

Arceans have been performing very well, I tweaked them a bit on top of anything in the mod (changes to Planetary Fortification, Cathedral of Valour and removing the speed penalty). The Drath have mostly sucked but twice now have started in a distant corner - to their credit they never surrendered and have been manipulating away, in the current game thay have even orchestrated an epic good versus evil fight (with the uber-Altarians doing most of the fighting, of course).

The Drengin and Korath have been unpredictable. I changed them both to AI personality 8, along with the Torians, as part of an experiment with 6 AIs using 8 and 6 using 11 (I have been reading all about this in various threads but am trying to learn first hand too). In my current game, both suck, and for some reason have failed to research Slave Pits three years into the game, but in two other games the Korath have been monstrous, as they should be. The Drengin seem to have the same quirk as the Terrans, of starting strong but then failing to progress. Both seem to be stronger on smaller maps, which seems odd, since I had put that down to the broken AI rather than any other factor.

Both have been modded slightly: the Drengin now get a Super Project early in the Economics tree that boosts their economy and production; the Korath are now Super Warriors, have slightly different starting bonuses (more soldiering and weapons and a diplomacy cut to match the Drengin's), and have lost the government part of the tree in exhange for new miliatary techs, including a new Super Project and a unique invasion tech to replace the spore ships. I have tried to keep the TPs balanced out and not to screw up the research priorities, but it is my first time modding.

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm finally getting some playing time in so I hope to get some more modding done soon.  It's turning out to be an interesting game because for some reason the custom race with the Yor tech tree really don't like me for some reason, but the Altarians and Torians seem intent on jumping to my aid every time they declare war.

So I think I'm going to do some more tech tree changes for the Yor so that they develop weapons and a military at about the same pace as everyone else.  I'm likely to mod their raceconfig too, because as the custom race shows, population growth penalties really hurt.  Hmm, never mind, they don't have a growth penalty so far as I can tell.

I've just noticed that in more than 40 games on TA, I have never seen the Thalans use any weapons type beside beam weapons. It happened both before and after I did some modding to the Thalan tech tree, but I'm fairly sure this can't be a coincidence - while other races do seem to "favor" certain weapons types, only the Thalans have always done things this way. Anyone else seen this happen?

The Thalans are also using just beam weapons in my game too!

I know that they are from the future and beam weapons look cool.

Not to mention that Disruptors are absurdly powerful.

But does it kill them to use something else besides beam weapons?

(They actually have a point or two in mass drivers once but I think that is only temporarily because they got rid of that rather quickly.)

Beats me what they're thinking there.  Have to look into it later.