Events/AI Tweaking Query

The civ-wide bonuses use the number of the corresponding ability, plus 100. The Diplomacy ability, for example, has the value 11. So to make an event, that changes the Diplomacy ability, you have to use the value 111. The AbilityBonuses.xml contains most of the abilities, but for a complete list you're better off looking at one of the .raceconfigxml's under My Docs\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor (if you don't have such a file, just start a new game, and it will create one for the race you are playing). At the end of the file is a listing with all the abilities in the game (even the ones, that are disabled). It will look like this:

<ECONOMICS>0</ECONOMICS>
<Ability0>0</Ability0>
<WEAPONS>0</WEAPONS>
<Ability1>0</Ability1>
<DEFENSE>0</DEFENSE>
<Ability2>0</Ability2>

The first line tells you the name of the ability, and is used for the innate bonus of the race. The second line tells you the ability number, and is used for the bonus you chose at race creation. As you can see, Economics has the number 0, Weapons the number 1, and Defense the number 2.

As for the AI Personalities, there is no comprehensive list about them. The only way to learn more about them is to observe them. I still haven't figured out everything about them, but here is what I'm absolutely certain about:

AIP 7

This is the main AI of the Drengin, Korath, and Yor. It is quite militaristic, very good at keeping morale up (by building lot's of morale improvements), but doesn't colonise in areas where it could get influenced by other races. Some people consider this AI to be broken, due to the last part, but it can work, as long as you make sure that those races start with enough planets close by.
The Korath-specific version is the only AI capable of using Spore ships. The downside, however, is that it will never research Planetary Invasion techs. Nor will it ever build troop transports, should it get it's hand on the techs after all (by trading or stealing them).
The Drengin-specific version makes pretty good use of it's Super Ability, by extorting other races.
Both the Drengin and the Korath have problems researching manufacturing techs.

AIP 8

This is the main AI for the Drath, Krynn, Terran, and Thalan. It is extremely militaristic, loves manufacturing techs, but doesn't like research or colonisation techs. It is also quite good at using starbases.
The Drath- and Terran-specific version makes good use of it's Super Abilty, by bribing other races to go to war.
The Thalan-specific version is an oddball, because it doesn't have the love for manufacturing techs, and it's research-behaviour is quite erratic. I still haven't fiqured this one out.

AIP 10

This is the main AI for the Iconians and Torians. It is extremely expansionistic, but doesn't utilise new worlds after a certain point (it will only build a Starport there, but nothing else). Due to the last part, it is considered broken.

AIP 11

This is the main AI for the Altarians, Arceans, and Korx. As already stated, it is pretty generic. Nothing remarkable about it, except for it's economy, which is pretty bad. I often see it using extremely high tax rates, sometimes even above 100%. No idea how that is possible.
The Arcean-specific version is very good at waging war, but for some reason not so good at colonising planets, even if you remove the speed-penalty.

The Drath AI also buys a whole lot of ships, something I've never really seen from the other AIs with personality 8.

Also, while they might have changed it for TA (and probably did), this wasn't true in DA. In at least one (long) game that I played, the Korath abandoned the use of spore ships altogether in favor of troop transports.

I've personally never seen anything that convinced me the AI personalities are changed by the dialogue tag.

I think the Drath buy a lot of ships because they can afford it due to the insane amount of money you get from Warprofit (2000 bc/turn ?!).

As for the Arceans. I've made a test map with several planets and let the AI colonize them again and again and you get the same result pretty much every time. Then I upped the AI value for Navigation Centers to see the difference. It was huge. So personally I think their speed penalty is their main issue.

Also, during my testing with custom races I found that AIP7 will use spore ships when given Super Annihilator, even with dialogue tag set to generic and it will ignore Invasion categorized tech but only AIP7 will do this, none of these others will.

That's all very helpful - many thanks!

It also explains I guess why I always notice the Krynn or Thalans to go colonisation-crazy and gobble up half the galaxy before I've even met everyone, whereas the Arceans and Altarians are quite content to sit there with a grand total of two colonised star systems...

EDIT: Found answer to my own question, so removed the question

Cheers

It's possible the dialogue tags don't change things. But I'm 99% certain there are some deeper differences than the four "top-level" personalities. Custom races aren't necessarily going to show it; the real question would be what happened if you (say) modded the Drengin or Yor specifically to have Super Annihilator.

Rather than make a new thread, I thought I'd just keep using this one for this additional question:

I've installed Autumn Twilight, but made a few minor changes to it. One of the changes in the original mod is to reduce the food/pop output for the civ capital to 8 billion. I want to restore that to the original level, however editing the PlanetImprovements.xml doesn't seem to work (the xml says 16, the game says 8!). Is there another file which governs this as well as PlanetImprovements.xml?

Cheers,

To my knowledge, no there isn't another file. Did you accidentally change the initial colony perhaps? Or maybe left in the old tag? When there's multiple tags of the same type the game defaults to the last one.

No, I just changed the value in the CapitalCity entry that was there, from an 8 to a 16. So it looks like this:

Yet I still only get 8bn people on Earth.

Is your population capped at 8 bn or is it 8 out of 16?

It says 8bn max. :-/

Did you start a new game after making the change? The game stores the xml data within the save-file to make sure that patches don't break the game.

Yes, I've tried that. Unfortunately that gives no joy, either. I even tried altering the vanilla PlanetImprovements.xml to no gain. I can't see anywhere or anything that has food set to 8 (I even edited the colony improvement, in case there was a bug with Autumn Twilight, but that doesn't make any difference either).

That makes no sense. It should have worked then.

Is Autumn Twilight itself working fine or are there any other problems? If there are, then that could mean that the mod isn't set up correctly. If there aren't, then something else is amiss. Although, when editing the vanilla PlanetImprovements.xml has no effect, then it is most likely the latter.

Edit: Hold on. When editing the vanilla PlanetImprovements.xml, which one did you use? There are three in the game files (plus the one from my mod): the one for DL (GalCiv2\Data\English), the one for DA (GalCiv2\DarkAvatar\Data\English), and the one for TotA (GalCiv2\Twilight\Data\English). When playing TotA, only the last one will be used. If you edited one of the other ones, they will have no effect.

Aha. I seem to have figured it out. And unsurprisingly I feel like a complete numpty for not having thought of it sooner!

Seems my TA was pointing to GalCiv2/Mods instead of Twilight/Mods. That would explain why the game wasn't behaving how I expected it to (the minors were rather slow to start colonising...now I see why). Now I have my 16 billion pop cap on Earth again. Many thanks for your patience.