Is ToA really broken?

I would not agree that TOA is broken, sure some people may find it easier than others but I find it a challenge.  Mind you I normally play Immense Galaxy with very slow techs and max number of AI players in game at the hardest settings.

The only thing that I notice is one race always seems to jump way out ahead of the rest, but it appears to be always different.  That and some races always appear to be much weaker than the rest but none the less I still enjoy playing.

The trouble with the AI is that the racial tech trees were rushed to the finish line.  The categories show up wrong in the editors and that seems to be reflected in the game too.  Modded tech trees help to correct bad AI decision-making by telling it that a tech will help it to improve the PQ of a planet, for example.

There are some AI personalities that don't fill out their planets with economic structures.  Again, easy fixed.

Playing modded tech tree and modded AI personalities ToA is quite a bit more satisfying than vanilla ToA, in my opinion.  It's not perfect but it's better.

And yes, if you want the full experience you need to crank the difficulty up to at least Tough.  Don't randomise the opponent intelligence.  I think this unfortunately means you can't pick random opponents, but don't worry about it, there's enough that happens differently each game that knowing who your opponents are ahead of time is not that much of an issue.

I own DL and DA, and play DA often.

I am disinclined to buy a game that requires me to somehow implement a third party mod to make it worthwhile.  (For one thing, I am not very good at editing directories and all that stuff)  The behavior of several AIs (e.g., the ones that build few or no structures on colonies) make the game not worth the time investment.  Several players departed these boards when those flaws in TA became evident and there was no action taken to fix them by the publisher of the game in a patch.

DA remains fun for me on Suicidal, and I would buy TA if it were patched to fix those problems.  The possibility of a patch is one reason I keep checking in here.

Yeah well I didn't create a mod for people who were thinking about getting ToA, I made it because I'd already got it and didn't want it to suck so badly.  And if people who already have the Ultimate Edition want to give ToA a try, there's nothing to be lost by trying it with the mod installed.

But hey, I agree and I have said that a patch is really the only sure fix.

Okay you know what irks me, is that yes, people have been buying the Ultimate Edition recently, and they're not getting their money's worth.

As cool as it is to go blow up some stars, if you're going to play vanilla (and a lot of people are not even going to give the modding section of the forums a glance) you might as well play DA, because vanilla ToA is like a Vorlon planet destroyer without the destruction beam installed.

You want to go take it for a spin, but you know you'll feel sad when you push the big red button and nothing happens.

Okay you know what else irks me is that Fallen Enchantree now has a modding library.  What do we get?  A quasarnaut if we're lucky.

The GC2 mod database has been devoid of any new entries for years now.  I know, it's crazy right?  I have to link to the mod on my own site.  I'm actually surprised that nobody has said, 'Dude where's the mod in the database, I don't see it.'

That said, might as well be invisible posting my mod in the modding section of the forums.  I've got no advertising, no review of the mod in the news posts, not that many people jumping onto the topic and yelling in caps THIS IS GREAT.  There are some people downloading the mod, usually the same month I throw an update out there.  But you know, we're talking double digits, and I don't mean eighties or nineties.

I actually thought you know, that modding the game, doing all the testing, playing the game to get a feel for what it's like, all that was the hard part.

No, it's getting people to play it.

What you have to understand is that I don't have style, I don't have a cool name or recognition like some of the other modders, I just sort of got into it because I noticed a few things that didn't seem right.

Tolmekian would tell you pretty much the same thing, and his mod is way cooler, like his avatar.

MarvinKosh, yours is one of the MODS that I was looking at. So rest assured that people do see what work you've done over the years.

Well this is truly a bitter pill to swallow. I really like ToA so much so that I'm willing to run the MODS that the community makes. It's a crying shame it can't get the same attention as Falcon 4 or Silent Hunter 4 gets. Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will leak the code like they did with Falcon 4.

Is MarvinKosh and Tolmekain MODS very different? Can they be combined into one SuperMOD? Are each for different style of play?

Long live mad modders!

Well they're both tech tree mods so you kinda have to use one or the other.  They also both alter the raceconfig file so you may need to hit Clear when customising your opponents for the mod to take effect properly.

Try them both (one after the other obviously) see which one you like better.

Me, I don't use mods.

Because Galactic Civilizations ToA Vanilla is challenging in the fact I can't seem to steam-roll my opponents on the higher difficulties like I did with Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire on hardest difficulty.

That alone should account for something.

They aren't as challenging as they should be, though.  I'll tell you how bad it was, I had got all the way up to Phasors and the AI was building frigates maxed out with... wait for it... shields.  No weapons, just a hull jam-packed full of shields.

Now it's a different story if I (or one of the other races) were to develop missle weapons, since the faulty tech trees effectively say 'If we need defences against missile weapons, research Space Weapons.'  What?  Just... what?

You can't rely on the player (or the other races) to pick missile weapons every time though.  And this is just one example of how the unmodded tech trees are broken.  There are piles more.  What do you think has kept me busy working on a mod for two years?

But there are two flaws in the mods I saw:

1.) No ultimate weapons

2.) No Military-Assist Weapons for space stations.

I really want all options open and both have saved me in the past.

Until I see BOTH, I will not download the mods.

There are ultimate weapons, but they take a bit longer to research than before and they've been scaled up in terms of both damage and space required.  The reasoning behind that was that the AI was just going to use its miniaturisation tech to mount them on fighters.  Some of the high-end non-ultimate weapons have been scaled up as well.

There are military-assist weapons for military starbases but the number of modules have been cut back.  Unfortunately, the number of modules that the AI can use is limited (to about a hundred) and I had to make cutbacks somewhere.  You can still do a military starbase strategy but not to nearly the same degree as before.

I've been considering uploading a pure "fix the tech trees" mod, without any tweaks or personal preferences - just a pure correction of the incorrect categories - for just this reason.

A lot of tweaks and personal preferences come about as a result of annoyances with the original tech tree.  It's too easy for both human and AI player to race up to ultimate weapons.  We have no choice but to cut the starbase modules down so that the useful ones fall within the 100 limit.

I wish it were Stardock fixing the tech trees and sorting the AI out and removing such an arbitrary limitation but they're not.  Or at least not that we've heard.

Yet another reason for me to finally finish (and release) my mod. As soon as I get my SSD, I will continue modding. This time, however, I will finish it. 4.5 years is long enough. Still, I could use some help testing the mod. Solo- and AI vs AI-tests only go so far.

So, with mods (MarvinKosh's or Tolmekian's, etc.), is the AI in ToA now on par with DA?

On par... On par... Apples and oranges. (And no, but it is close enough.)

It is noticeable that the AI in DA and ToA has been derived from the much simpler DL. In DA, the complexity hasn't exploded badly enough for the AI to be seriously affected: it plays extraordinary well for an AI that doesn't cheat (especially with full processor use enabled). In ToA, the limits of the original DL AI shines through and this combined with the techtree-fails to make the AI appear broken to more experienced players (and I guess it is). I do keep in mind though, that what we consider a broken AI in ToA is often still better at playing the game than the AI in many other strategy series.

The case for playing ToA is that it is in theory the better game. It has more options, more variation, more "realism" and can keep you busy for hours and hours on end. More options also give you more to learn and, importantly, more special combinations that let you rise to power faster than probably intended. In complex situations, it is the human learning curve, rather than the AI "intelligence", which will win out in the end. There is only so much programmers can foresee in strategy (the example of age of empires 2 comes to mind: in later expansions, the AI build up was made much more efficient and therefore the AI much more dangerous based on recorded games by humans playing multiplayer. However, on the tactical field the AI could never fight in the same way a human would). Marvin Kosh's mod makes the AI better at the game not just through "fixing" the tech tree, but also by telling the AI, based on Kosh's experience and "customer feedback" what works. Vanilla can be enjoyable, just turn up the difficulty if you find you're rolling over "gimped opponents" (if you already play at the highest level, you should perhaps cut back on "gaming the system"), but I would recommend getting one of the mentioned mods as they are in essence the AI patch the game never got.

Come on Stardock; we need a 2.05 patch to fix these tech tree issues.

Stardock is kinda busy with Fallen Enchantress (and the new expansion to it) at the moment. Even if not, I wouldn't hold my breath for a new patch. Besides, as long as you don't play Metaverse games, there are four mods you can use, that fix these issues (and more). They all do it in a different way, so you should find something that suites your taste.

Still, I hope we get an official fix. Stardock can just observe what was changed in the mods, and implement their own fix that way - without borrowing any code.