Ah, so that's the reason...

You probably missed it in the wall of text, but I was wondering if you'd be willing to share the conversation fix?  I'd like to package it with the 2.1 release.

Sure, though I wouldn't know where to upload it.

Hey again Tolmekian.  It’s been a couple of weeks and I’ve had a chance to play a few games using your v2.0 mod so I thought I’d throw some feedback your way.  You know, because I’m a helluva guy or whatever.  Anyhow, I’ve rounded up all my notes and hopefully at least some of this will be useful to you.  Oh yeah, it’s long, so I hope it fits in one post and I hope it doesn’t hurt your eyes…

 

Right, so I played three games using the mod, although the first game doesn’t really count because I quit less than half way through (the U.P. voted to double trade revenue and one of the things I wanted to get a feel for was how trade would work in a normal game).  The other two games I played as a custom race (maxed out trade bonus) that used the Terran tech tree, with the following settings: Gigantic galaxy, occasional habitable planets, and very slow research (I love very slow tech, even with the inflation explosion, although it does mean that I almost NEVER develop weapons that do more than 2 damage).

 

In no particular order, here are some thoughts/observations…

 

• Minors.  I don’t use the colonizing minors variant, but I could see an obvious improvement in the way minor civs play.  For one thing, they’re much more aggressive it seems.  Most of the initial declarations of war were minor powers calling out majors.  I also noticed that I was unable to make research/economic treaties with some of the major powers and yet when I looked at the foreign relations screen, it didn’t look like anyone else had them either.  I thought it was a bug or something, but then I figured out that these major powers were probably giving their treaties away to MINOR powers – something I’d not seen before.  Of course this is great for the minors, but as a major power, I’m not sure I’d waste something as useful as a research/economic treaty on a scrub.  But it looks like that’s what some of the computer civs were doing.  Maybe it’s always been that way and I just never noticed.  Kinda cool though.
• Loyalty.  Did you mess with loyalty?  I noticed that some enemy worlds were totally engulfed by my influence (my influence was more than double theirs) and yet I got no flips.  And this wasn’t the Yor or the Krynn either (I think those two are hard to flip) – it was the Korx and the Korath Clan.  I don’t build influence starbases but I’ll abuse influence planet improvements if I can swallow a nearby foreign colony.  Yet I couldn’t get any conversions in situations which I normally would expect to.
• Double buildable icons.  On the planet screen, I noticed that if I had traded for a tech that would give me access to theRecruitingCenter (War Rooms I believe) I’d have a choice between two identical icons in the list of improvements available to build (the other being from my own Space Militarization).  Of course I couldn’t actually build both Recruiting Centers, but they were there.  This isn’t a problem at all - just letting you know (I’m sure it’s probably not supposed to do that).  It was in the old version 1 mod as well.
• Extreme Colonization.  I noticed the Altarian Resistance had this tech.  Is it the same thing as Advanced Colonization?  Because it looks identical.  If so, why not just have one tech for both?  Is it just so we have the opportunity to stack that 5% planet quality bonus from both techs?  By the way, I thought adding bonuses to all the old “gateway” techs was pretty cool.
• Offensive Meditation.  How the hell do I get this?  It seems like just about every other civ has access to it, but none of them will trade it to me.  I’m sure it’s probably not in everyone’s tech tree, so they must be trading it – but not with me!  I’ve tried every cologne in my medicine cabinet but they just won’t give it up.
• Mercenary Accadamy.  Never seen this before; is it any good?  I think I could have gotten the Korx to trade it, and I probably should have, but I didn’t.  It says you get “2%” of something for civs at war.  2% of what?  2% of their tax revenue? 
• Unique techs in Diplomacy.  Sometimes a civ’s unique techs have the little asterisk next to them in the diplomacy window (like Arena of Agony, Devils Forge, and Diabolical Research), and sometimes they don’t.  Noticed this for both the Korath Clan and the Drengin.  No biggy, just curious.  Also, I have written down here that they had “Imaginative Research” listed TWICE at one point (again in the diplomacy trade window deal thingy).
• Random Team.  In one game, I got jumped by the Drengin (bastards!) and the Terrans decided to honor their alliance with me and declared war on the Drengin.  The problem is, I wasn’t even IN an alliance.  This was before I, or anyone else, had even researched the Alliances tech, but I saw that me and the Terrans had the little blue “team” line connecting us in the Treaties tab.  After exiting the game to start a new one just to test what would happen, I found that the game started me in a team with another civ (the Iconians I believe).  I’ve never used teams before so I know this wasn’t from a previous set-up.  Maybe I’m going mad, but I thought it might have something to do with the mod so I’m bringing it up.
• Defenses.  I know that you totally revamped the weapon and defense branches of the tech tree, but I had a few questions.  Were the space requirements for defenses raised?  I thought I read somewhere that you actually REDUCED the space requirements for defenses, but I also seem to remember being able to fit a few barriers (or equivalent defense) on tiny fighters without too much miniaturization and still have room for some weapons.  I could just be misremembering things though.  I have to pee.
• Trimming the tech tree.  How much pruning was actually done?  What I mean is, how much unique stuff got the axe?  For instance, you got rid of all the civ-specific weapons (like kinetic screamers, or whatever they were called), but what about those special Evil/Good aligned weapons and defenses?  I only play Neutral, and I’m very happy to retain myNeutralityLearningCenters and my Neutral Shipping, but I hope the other alignments didn’t get boned.  And what about other civ-unique techs?  I know you got rid of Warp Bubbles, which was in the Terran tech tree, but was anything added to replace it as a Terran-specific tech?  What about the other civs (which I don’t play), did any of their unique techs get tossed too?  I like the idea of civilizations having unique technologies (whatever balancing nightmare this might be), and I just hope things didn’t get too watered down in order to make the AI work properly.  (Of course I guess I’d rather have a playable AI than unique techs, but I’d love to have both)
• Hull spaces.  Do systems still take up more space on bigger hulls?  I think it used to be a set number plus like 2% of how big the hull was or something, right?  Is that still true?  Because I could have sworn I saw weapons (and defense systems) taking up the same space on my medium hull as they did on a tiny in v2.0.  If this is the case, I think smaller hulls are getting the bone.  Personally, I feel that all hull sizes should be viable at any stage in the game.  I know Galciv2 doesn’t really promote that thought though – attack/defense/hp totals being equal, a larger ship will almost always dominate a pack of smaller ones.  I just think that if weapon/defense space requirements were standardized across all hull sizes, it would further screw smaller ships (giving us less of a choice of what to build in the later game – no point in building anything but your biggest hull).  Maybe I’m confused though.  It’s happened before.
• Spies.  Holy monkey, where did all these guys come from?  In all my games, I was spending tons of money on espionage just to flush the spies out of my colon.  Don’t get me wrong, it was fun, and I enjoyed it much more than the occasional saboteur sneaking up on me like it used to be, but these guys have now become a pestilence!  Like in the bible.  They’re bible spies.  Anyway, I’d never had my espionage slider up to 25% before now, but it was there at least half the time in both games I played.
• Non-weapon/defense balance.  You balanced out the space-to-damage ratios for all the weapons, I know, but are you considering doing the same for any of the other tech branches?  For example, I never build Industrial Sectors because Manufacturing Centers have a much more efficient maintenance-to-output ratio (Industrial Sectors are a bloody rip off if you ask me – only two more production points but almost double the maintenance of aManufacturingCenter.  Plus the build cost is absurd – like it’s some big privilege to get screwed so we have to make them harder to build).  Another example is the Warp V engine.  It takes up more space per movement point than Warp IV and cost 25% more money to boot!  Anyway, just curious as to whether you had any plans to tweak some of the other tech branch costs.
• Galactic Achievements.  One thing I really like a lot about your mod is all the galactic achievements that I never used to see before.  So many of the originals were such dogs!  Galactic Guidebook (crap), Orbital Terraformers (only available with Terraforming Tech, so by the time you get it, you don’t really need it – should be available earlier I think), Eyes of the Universe (TOO useful in my oppinion – why did I bother researching all those techs when all I needed was this one wonder?), the Alignment Temples (syphilis), Re-Education Center (too rarely useful - smells like crud), Galactic Resort (it only works on the planet it’s built on and only 20% morale boost - you almost definitely have better buildings available that AREN’T galactic achievements)… I hate all of these and I hate anyone who’s ever built any of them.  By the time you weed out all the crummy ones, there’s only a handful left that are worth a planet tile.  Your mod changes that though, and it’s refreshing to see wonders that I actually can’t wait to build!  Were these always in the game, but we simply never saw them because the tech trees were so messed up?  Or did you add them in yourself?  Any chance of some of the old dogs getting an enema?  Like the ones above for instance – I can’t be the only one who sees a lot of wasted potential in these.  I’m still pissed off that they took away the Galactic Privateer, instead of fixing it.
• Quantum Power Plants.  There was a time when if you had one of the various power plants on a planet, and chose to either demolish it or build over it, the plant would no longer be available to be re-built.  Please tell me that someone else remembers this, because it used to piss me off like rap music.  But then they fixed it (or I thought they did) and everything was cool.  But while playing these test games, I noticed that the Quantum Power Plant (not the Fusion or Anti-Matter) would still do this.  If I decided I didn’t like where the Power Plant was and chose to build over it, then I simply wouldn’t get a Quantum Power Plant on that planet.  I’m sure this isn’t part of your mod, but I thought I’d bring it up in the event you might be inclined to fix it.
• Trade.  This was the aspect of your mod that I had my eye on from the beginning, as I believed the values you introduced might be a bit high for my play style.  As I said, I play with only “occasional” habitable planets in a gigantic galaxy, so my civilization’s population doesn’t get too crazy.  For someone who plays games where they might control 50 or more planets, your v2.0 mod might be right on the money.  For me, however, I found that having trade modifiers increased by x10 across the board pushed my game into the realm of Monty Hall.  I was receiving so much from trade, that I didn’t research any of the economy techs until the very end of the game – just used the generic 7-11 markets you start with and the basic farm.  At the same time, I was able to build my treasury up to over 60,000 while spending 25% of my income on espionage to defend against the plague of spies!  Every time there was a new Galactic Achievement available, I’d buy it without a thought because the money wouldn’t stop.  I think a lot of people enjoy this play style, but for me, I LIKE struggling to pay the bills and keep my civilization going by any means possible (just like a real government).  Having everything handed to me (which is what this felt like), isn’t my cup of tea.  Now granted, my civ is a “trader” civ, but I didn’t even have the Mercantile political party, so I was only operating at +700% trade, instead of +900%, which means I could have been even FILTHIER rich!  So here’s what I did (and I hope you don’t mind – you can kick me in the balls if you do, and I’ll repent):  For my next game I used notepad to modify the xml files in your mod so that the trade values were HALF of what you had (+50 for each of the four trade techs, +150 for civ customization, +100 for Mercantile party).  Trade was STILL a signifigant part of my economy (which I think it should be for a civ that concentrates on trade), but I wasn’t wiping my ass with credits either.  With your permission, I would like to keep these reduced values (though if you’re not cool with it, I’ll change them back).

 

Holy crud, that was a lot more than I intended to write!  If you don’t want to read a wall of text, I’ll totally understand.  But if you do, please don’t think that I’m complaining – these are notes I made during my games, and most of it is just odd stuff that I’d never seen before (not bad – just different).  None of these are a big deal, and some of them are pretty trivial, but they were things I noticed as I was playing so I made note of them.  Play testing seems like it would consume a huge amount of time, so I figured that as long as I was playing, I’d gather as much info as I could in order to help out.  Sorry this is so long.  I suppose I could have sent this to you in a pm, but I didn’t.  Does that piss you off?  Sorry.

 

AI used trade to get lots of money --> lots of spies and big fleet's.

I build espionage centers to counter that (AI doesn't build them, I haven't seen one at least) --> too easy to drown them with spies, that you don't use to nullify spies + steal technology when you capture planets (those are the only times I have managed to steal tech at least <-- Espionage level Advanced?).

I tried your suggestion and while it doesn't remove the problem completely, it certainly reduced it considerably. Most races won't bother with the offensive modules anymore and the defensive modules will be researched much much later. This seemed to depend somewhat on AIP, race and research output. In any case, most races now have a much better chance to research something useful before the Yor start to wipe them out.  

Good enough for me! Thanks again!

 

BTW, I found out why I never saw the AI adding defenses to influence bases. While both AIP 8 and 11 make good use of economy, mining and military bases, only AIP 11 really uses influence bases. AIP 8 builds them, but thats it mostly.

For the most part, I have been concentrating my efforts on the AIP 8 races in my mod lately. Even if AIP 11 races are in the test game, they usually don't have the time to build influence bases, nevermind upgrade them. Especially if the Yor are present, too! While trying to improve the Arceans, I turned the Yor into an unstoppable war machine, somehow. They have yet to lose a game! 

I've noticed something very peculiar. I took over a minor a while back and it seems that some are removed from the MinorRace techtree. For example: Space Militarisation and nearly every propulsion tech seem to just disappear. The techtree still connects properly but the techs in between are still needed to continue a research line.

I've yet to notice a minor develop weapons because of this.

 

Can anyone confirm that this is the norm or isolated to my install.

I can confirm that. Though the MinorRace_TechTree.xml is fine, certain techs are not showing up for them in the game. It happens in both the un-modded game and mods. My guess is, that this is a hardcoded limitation to further differentiate the minor and major races. This doesn't hamper their ability to research weapons, though. At least not in my games.

I have a question: what do we know about how the AI customizes ships?  The ShipCfgs list some basic modules on ships, like Basic Support.  The AIs don't remove modules from ships unless they and changing the effectiveness of a module, right?  Because they have templates for each category of weapons; if I was the designer, I might make the ship customizing AI just smart enough to only improve on the systems already extant in the templates.

What if you forcibly installed fleet modules on the largest size vessel templates that the AIs use?  They'll either not build those ships, remove the modules, leave them there, or possibly upgrade them, the templates having 'primed the pump'.

I think I might test this as soon as I get my GalCiv II accounts all straightened out; it seems there was a 2.04 update that I never downloaded.  Unless of course, and it is likely, that such shenanigans have been tried already to no avail.

It's all good.  I'm kind of a wall-of-text guy myself, with no aversion to reading.  I appreciate all the feedback and the time you took to make notes. Your commentary was entertaining, as well, so that helps.

I'll hit your comments point by point:

Minors.  Since smart minors can't colonize, they're left to build constructors and warships. I'm surprised at their aggression, but if they have a military and the majors don't, I can see how it happens.  AIPersonality 5 (the minor AI), also looks to be optimized for life on one planet.  That means heavy research into weapons and trade, for one. They also have what I think is a unique ability to build new structures over existing ones.  As far as I know, minors neither give nor receive treaties with the other AIs.  It's never happened in any of my games, even with colonizing, semi-major minors. Are there any races you haven't encountered? It could be that the treaties are going to an unknown race, in which case it won't show up on the treaties screen.  Also, in the trade dialogue, if you change your view to Relations, it will show who they are at war with, allied with, and who they have treaties with.  You can hunt down the lost treaties that way.  If you still have any save games, could you try it out and let me know?

Loyalty.  I didn't do anything to loyalty, other than make a couple techs and improvements boost it.  Your problem could simply be influence.  You need to break 4x influence for planets to start flipping.

Double buildable icons.  The Induction/Recruiting Center is a known issue.  It's the only way to make the same building available with 2 different techs. Not much I can do about it, but it doesn't hurt anything.

Extreme Colonization.  Extreme and Advanced Colonization actually are the same tech.  They just have different display names in different tech trees.  Since they're the same tech, you can't double up on it.  You research/trade for one, and you can't get the other. As for gateway techs, they needed something.  Glad you like it.

Offensive Meditation.  This is an Altarian tech.  I'm assuming you have tech brokering off if you can't get it from anybody else.  You'll have to beg the Altarians for it.  And don't overdo the cologne, they have sensitive noses.

Mercenary Accadamy.  The Mercenary Academy grants War Profiteering of 2%.  That means you get 2% of the economy from each race at war.  They don't lose it, you just get it. Only once for each race, no matter how many wars they are in.

Unique techs in Diplomacy.  I'm guessing the Drengin and Korath techs may not have asterisks because they share them.  Since they are in more than one TechTree, I guess they're not unique. 2 Imaginative Researches?  Don't know what to say for that.  Okay I just reread your comment - I don't know why some techs have it and some don't, if they're all shared between the two.  Hmmm.

Random Team.  I've heard of this.  Shouldn't have anything to do with my mod.  Do you play campaign at all?  Just make sure to check you relation with each race while setting up and make sure it's either unknown or neutral. I prefer neutral because then you can talk to all the races at game start, even if they're on the other side of the galaxy.  They can also join in UP votes, so no 1 or 2 race votes for the first few years.

Defenses.  I'm not sure offhand how my sizes stack up.  I tried to stick somewhat close to the originals.  Since I upped the strength of defenses, I may have upped the sizes a little to prevent ships with outrageous defense.

Trimming the tech tree.  At present, only the unique weapons and Fleet Warp Bubbles got the axe.  The good and evil weapons/defenses have taken the place of the ultimate weapons/defenses at the end of the appropriate line. Maybe that makes good and evil wait too long for benefit, but that's the way it is for now. You'll be happy to know that the fleet attack/defense/warp bubble techs are all coming back in v2.1

Hull spaces. What you're thinking of is SizeMod, which increases the component size based on a percentage of the hull.  I may have relaxed that some.  I'll look back and see if it bears any changing.

Spies.  Like Agorwal88 said, more money = more spies.  I also gave Counter Espionage a 10% Espionage bonus, which helps, I think.  Also, if you were the big-money galactic leader with your trade empire, you could simply be the target of everyone else's spies.

Non-weapon/defense balance.  Never really considered systematic balancing of other things.  After reading about how people don't use Industrial Sectors and reading your comment, I think I may have a look at them.  Not sure about Warp Drive.  I'd like to get v2.1 out in the very near future, so I'm not likely to tackle too much more at this point.

Galactic Achievements.  Glad to hear you like the changes.  The only one I added, I think, was the Hall of Justice for neutral civs.  I did that mostly because I needed something for Balanced Vision.  I restored 3 that were lost due to typos - the Galactic Stock Exchange, Galactic Monument, and Hyper Distribution Center.  Maybe in a future version I'll tweak some.  I may have a look at the Eyes of the Universe right now.  You realize, though, if I nerf it everyone will be looking at you . . .

Quantum Power Plants.  Heard about it. They may have fixed some, but I think some are still broken.  I don't think I can do anything about it. I'll put it on the list of things to look at, though.

Trade.  Coincidentally, I also reduced the bonus to 50% for v2.1.  I appreciate your respect for my ownership of the mod and the effort and all, but please feel free to do with it what you like. The whole idea of the mod is to make the game more enjoyable for everyone. If there's something you don't like, change it and be happy.  I reserve the right to kick you in the balls, though.

Alrighty then, that was a fun little slog.  Thanks again for all the input.  It looks like you'll be happy for v2.1 when it comes out.  I just need to get the conversation fixes from qrtxian and look at a couple small things, then it's on!

I haven't noticed this issue, and I've been looking at minors extensively in my last few playtests.  They are geared toward weapons research and often hold their own pretty well unless they're right next to a hostile major.

The only issue I have was with Neutral History.  I put it into the Minor TechTree so they could have Markets, but it looks like minors simply can't have that tech.  I had to make up a new one for them.

I've considered this, but never done it.  Please do, and let us know how it works.  It would be cool to include a batch of templates with the mod so that the AI could use them.  That would require a whole new round of optimization, though . . .

Have you considered changing the ID from "War Rooms" to "Space Militarization"? Both techs have essentially the same purpose, so they might as well be one.


The Drath have it, too. The strange thing about it, though, is that Defensive Meditation is untradable and unstealable, while Offensive Meditation is only unstealable.


I had that happen in one of my test games today. It might have something to do with using crtl+n to start new games, but I'm not sure. I never changed the starting relations of the races, so it definitely wasn't my doing.


Balancing the cost and maintenance of the planetary improvements was the original reason for me to write my mod. I made some progress, but it still is far from finished. At least the AI is no longer wrecking it's economy by building lots of overpriced, high maintenance improvements. Now it is just wrecking it's economy by building lots of mediumpriced, low maintenace improvements. And training spies at 25%. Lots and lots of spies.


I also haven't noticed it before. But after looking into, I could clearly see that MabusAltarn was right. At least now I know why the Snathi weren't doing better. I gave them the Drengin techtree and they were missing all of the manufacturing and research techs, among other things. At least the Dark Yor still had access to most of the Yor techtree.

I just did this and it seems to work. I thought I had a good reason to do it the other way.  Best thing I can think of is that I changed it early in the process, before I knew that I could give the same tech a different name and extra bonuses for a specific race.

I guess it does make it a non-unique tech, and since everybody gets Space Mil pretty early, you'll never be able to trade it.

It's weird, just like the whole Neutral History issue. It seems the minors are hard-coded against having certain techs.

How to fix it? Copy the whole tech tree and rename it Drengin-minor or Snathi or whatever. Then, you have to go through and change the ID on each tech that won't show up, along with the requirement for any higher techs.  Then you have to make duplicate improvements/starbase modules for the new techs, each having the new tech ID as a requirement.

Or you could just suffer without.  That's a lot of work. Or make new tech trees for the minor races.  Yikes.

I can suffer without it. Getting the major races to use their tech trees properly is enough work already. 

I'm sorry to ask such in idiotic question but how do I get this to work? I'm reinstalling GalCiv2 from scratch because, well, with civ4 being such a great earth-type 4x game, I plumb forgot about Galciv2 and I'd like to get it right the first time. Where do I install it? What do I do once I've loaded it up? Are there any special options I have to put in while I'm building my game? I'm grabbing the minors colonize link.

Also, since... um, politics, is there anywhere else you could upload these? Rapidshare is being all subscribey now.

Thanks a lot and keep up the good work. I'll let you know how badly I suck... I mean how great your mod is.

Put the extracted folder into the mod folder of the game. The standard path under Win 7 would be: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Galactic Civilizations 2\Mods".

In the game options activate "use mods" and change the path of "current mods directory" to the new "Tolmekian's Tech Tree Fix" folder. You have to restart the game after that.

Those are all the necessary steps for the mod to work. If you want, you can further edit the races in the opponent selection screen. But this isn't necessary.

So they all, by default, use the 8 ai (or whatever)?

You can download from rapidshare without subscribing, just scroll down to where it says Download.

Tolmekian set them all to AIP 11. You don't have to do anything in that regard. 

Toot-sweet. Thanks for the info.

You're welcome. 

Has any one else noticed that at least the Iconian tech trees are screwed up in the last version. There are no requirements for titanium amour or for stinger V/advanced missile weapons. The two of them seem to be combined, which seems like a mistake since beam and mass driver still have they advance weapon separate form laser/rail guns techs. Also the tech harpoon IV is named todo: display name, which is separate from the other harpoon techs. Also in same games computers have techs that no name just a * and blank spaces

Why does it say unavailable and incorrect downloading settings?

Everything looks fine on my end.  I'd suggest to download and install again and see how it works.

I don't know.  I just tested all four of my links and they work fine.  Sorry I can't say much for this.