Hi everybody,

I just reinstalled GC2 Ultimate from Steam. Now I'm not sure how to procede to install the CU? Should I install the beta from steam, or it still has problems and it's better I install CUFI.exe I find here?

Anything else I should do?

You don't need to do anything. The CU is already included.

No idea why the beta is still available though. It's identical with the current release version.

Ok thanks

Hi, in this patch the starting bonuses ability points of each race i selected is 100, is this normal? because in every video in youtube it is usually 10 or below. I can't find this changes documented in patch notes.

Hi,

yes it is normal, maybe they just forgot to indicate that in the updated manual.

Thanks! 

Hi all,

Just got the GoG version of GC2 and noticed it says version 2.20.  Is this the latest Community Update?

I had some issues.  What brought me here was the farm tiles not working but I see that's been talked about here.  Is there a way for me to add them back in.

Another issue I've had so far is my planetary governors won't build traditional factories i've placed in the build queue.

On the first post there is different links for things but I don't understand which one is the actual update?  and 2 of them are for dropbox which says I can't access them because of too much traffic.

Will this version work with mods?

Thanks for any help.

2.20 is the latest official version, but there may -or may not- another final version coming at some time which will re-include farming tiles/proper farming (amongst other stuff) as well.

In the meanwhile you can access this version via this link

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107322588/GalCiv/Twilight.zip

and install it as a MOD.

(@MarvinKosh: Maybe that link could be integrated into the original post, perhaps with a note on version numbers.)

I can't help you with the Governors/Traditional Factories issue until you hand out more information, esp. how to reproduce the bug, so I can fire up the game and look what the root of the problem is.

Thanks for the reply.  As far as planetary governor is concerned.  All I did was go into the planetary governor screen and create a new build called Starting Colony.  Added 3 Traditional Factory, 1 Starport, 1 Recruiting Center.  Then I went to my planets and picked that governor and only the starport and recruiting center gets dropped on a tile to be built.  The factories are ignored.

I see. This bug occurs because some planetary improvements got changed to hold the same internal names in PlanetImprovements.xml - which was primarily introduced to fix a severe bug when Minor-races couldn't access some of their starting improvements. If you go back to the Governor-screen you'll most likely see that the name of the Basic Factory got changed to Minor Basic Factory.

The update in the given link does solve this. However, the file/folder-structure of this .zip isn't prepared for a mod but to overwrite the core game files.

here's the adapted version for use as a mod:

deleted

simply extract to GalCiv2Ultimate\Twilight\mods [if you don't have a mods-directory already there create it manually]

it should then be selectable in the games options as

"Community created update with weapon cycling incl. farmfix.

Version: 6.1.0"

Thanks alot.. I'll give it a try.

Edit:

I downloaded the file you linked but it's an exe and not a zip to be uncompressed.  Seems fishy.  I ran it and it tried to get out to the internet and then popped up something saying my internet wasn't connected and press ok when it's fine .

I just looked up that site on the internet and it is a virus / malware site if you don't uncheck that little invisible checkmark next to "Download with Secured Download manager"  It gave me a fake file with the same name as yours except it was an exe and was less than a meg.  People have posted it's totally messed up there pc's and deleted restore points to boot.  I didn't have it access the internet and end tasked the file in processes so hopefully it didn't infect me but I wouldn't use that site anymore.

I did get the .zip after I unchecked the box it gave me the right file.

Somehow I missed this post, so sorry for late reply. I'm not going to use that host again. I've deleted the entry and I think we will host another one if the issues below have been closed.

***

I'm resumeing this discussion here because it's a better place to documentate the subjects.

Me too expected that tactic to be working - esp. since the icon would show up when it won't on the 2 other new invasion techs for Yor/Thalan. At one point I looked at their code but saw nothing wrong with it. Even asked Mabus how he got the icon to work but got no reply. Seeing now that Intimidation didn't work back than actually gives me some idea of *why* those icons didn't show up --> if you correct Intimidation to work correctly, its icon will also NOT display.

Moreso, on 2.20 both icons for Core Detonation & Marines (attributed to tech Space Marines) do ALSO NOT show up. However, both techs seem to work for invasion. So a total of 5 icons don't show up in the techtrees - roundabout 40%. If we could find out what this bug triggers, and do a possible correction, that would be nice. Not really optimistic though because even in 2.042 Core Detonation also didn't show up, but AFAIK that was the only one in that time.

Well, it may be a way for them to simply imbue GC2 with some life once every year, which is great if you think about how old that game already is. I find it just sad that we didn't use the time seeing as there was absolutely no hurry. As Frogboy said "We can always do updates"^^

In the 2.10 CU version I've created the invasion tactics seem to be in even greater turmoil, for example, InformationWarfare got attributed back to PlanetaryInvasion when in 2.20, this tactic was split in 2 - the original one attributed to Advanced Diplomacy so diplomatically crippled factions didn't get it at all, while Drengin/Korath got their slightly weaker Intimidation. This splitting is broken now, with Drengin/Korath even getting both (with one obsoleting the other). I hope my files aren't in disarray... (since I keep several separate installations of GC2 on my drive). Can you confirm this?

I agree. The overall balancing doesn't seem right.

First off, Mini-Soldiers isn't used at all (labelled ImpossibleTech) when on the other hand, similar techs were created whose icons won't work. I'd rather change the increments on Mini-Soldiers and see if this may work. Otherwise we probably should delete all obsolete entries in InvTactics.xml because there's a bug at large which makes the AI being able to use any existing technique, and I have no clue if ImpossibleTech-label actually prevents that...?

Both TerrorDrones & MechWarriors are too weak. The generic counterpart Marines & ShockTroops are better - Marines is even OP IMO. Ironically Marines is tradeably - and thus obsoletes any special tactic if traded. Maybe its just me, but somwhow I feel that if a race gets a completely unique & nontradeable invasiontechs then this should actually be stronger than the generic one. Even more so since Thalan/Yor do have much less total techniques to choose from:

Thalan have one cheap, and 2 expensive - no midpriced.

Yor only have destructive invasion techniques, although TerrorDrones only destroys buildings. The desc says "we estimate" when, in fact, this is an exact description of what it does, not an estimation. I sort of also can't see why a robotics race can't master drone combat be it in the region of not doing collateral damage, be more stronger or have lesser costs.

Well here's the new rev including a fix for those invasion-techniques whose icons weren't shown. I've also reverted the splitting of InformationWarfare/Intimidation back to CU 6.02 (Twilight 2.20) but rebalanced Stellar Marines vs Shock Troops vs Terror Drones vs Mechanized Warriors in a balanced way, deleted some redundant code, took the ugly -25% espionage penalty out of the political parties but into the techtrees (most races should get them now during the first year - which is ok considering the first 5 spies are deadcheap to get). Included a tiny ReadMe.txt to inform about how to get this to work.

http://www.xup.in/dl,52191633/Community_Update_6-1-1.7z/

No surprise there. I asked him several times how he wanted me to handle Spinorial's UI changes (especially the ones that were just fixes), and never got a reply either.

Odd, but I almost expect this sort of behaviour from the game.

I'm pretty certain that the Core Detonation did show up in v2.04 and earlier, but I can't verify that, because I don't have the old .EXE. Checking DL and DA doesn't help either, because their .EXEs have been modified by Stardock, so CD no longer shows up there, too. I really wonder what happened to cause that? Or perhaps I'm completely wrong, and misremembering this. That's also possible.

Maybe. However, the response I got from Yarlen, when I asked what the hold-up was, gave me the impression that the update would come out after Ashes got released (which happened at the end of March).

In v2.20 Information Warfare requires Advanced Diplomacy, while Intimidation is supposed to require Xeno Intimidation, but is currently unsuable, because the requirement is bugged. In the update Information Warfare got moved back to Planetary Invasion (I must have missed that during the whole revision changes), while Intimidation is unchanged (i.e. not working).

No, ImpossibleTech doesn't prevent it. As far as I can tell, the AI simply ignores the Tech_Requirement.

I would give Shock Troops the values from Mini-Soldiers, and simply get rid of Marines. Everybody with access to Stellar Marines also has access to the Mass Driver tactic, which serves the same function (increasing the attack value of the invader). Plus, Stellar Marines already unlocks Core Detonation. There is no need for a second tactic, in my opinion.

Core Detonation itself, however, could use a slight buff. It currently provides the same bonus as Tidal Disruption (40-50% penalty to the attack value of the defender), but at a higher cost (250 vs 200) and worse penalty (10-30% PQ reduction and 20-30% PI destruction vs 70-100% PI destruction). Just increasing the bonus to 50-60% or 50-70% should be enough.

Gas Warfare also seems a bit overpriced (15-30% penalty to defender, cost 200, 5-20% PQ reduction). Dropping the PQ reduction to 5-10% would be a bit more sensible, in my opinion. At least I would actually use the tactic then.

The way I see it, the collateral damage done by the Terror Drones is intentionally. As their name implies, Terror Drones are there to cause terror in the enemy troops. What better way to do that, than to spread chaos and destruction by shooting up the neighbourhood (including the civilians). However, the bonus type of the tactic should be a penalty to the defender in this case (i.e., changing the value from 1 to 3), because the purpose is to disrupt the defenders abilitiy to fight back. That would also fix another issue I have with the current setup: there are too many tactics that provide a bonus to the invader.

If I understand this correctly, the icon shows up when the InternalName and the DisplayName of the tech are identical. Interesting... Of course, changing the IntenalName of techs requires a check of the scenarios and campaigns, to make sure it didn't break anything. At least the Battle of the Gods scenario will require a fix.

Looks sensible. However, I still don't understand why Information Warfare got split up. What purpose does it serve besides preventing the Yor from getting access to it? And why the Yor in particular? Because they're genocidal? There are several other races with genocidal tendencies (Korath, Drengin, Terrans, even the Altarians to a degree) that still have access to IW in some form, so that doesn't make sense. If it isn't the Yor's drive to wipe out all meatbags, then what is the reason behind this restriction?

I tried that approach before and ran into an issue with the campaigns. For some reason the Espionage penalty got doubled for the player (non-Player races weren't affected, as far as I could tell). I first noticed this during the mission A Nightmare on Dithir, because I couldn't train any spies (which made the mission unwinnable). The Espionage penalty was at -100% instead of the intended -50%. I never figured out what caused this. The penalty was correctly removed from the Political Parties and the tech tree entry also checked out okay. It's really strange.

Speaking of the campaigns, the Campaigns subfolder in the Mods-folder doesn't work. The game doesn't register any data within that folder. If you move the Campaigns folder out of the Data folder (i.e. Community Update 6-1-1\Campaigns) then it works. However, subfolders within the Campaigns folder still don't work. You need to place any files within them directly into the Campaigns folder.

That's correct. I think this is the result of a bug, because such a requirement makes no sense and no other data except invasion-techniques show this behaviour.

I've virtually no experience with those files and would greatly welcome it if you could help on anything Campaign-related.

Internal-names of techs that got changed in Techtree.xml were:

•   <Culture ID="XenoIntimidation">  -->   <Culture ID="Xeno Intimidation">
•   <Weapons ID="MechanizedWarriors">  -->   <Weapons ID="Mechanized Warriors">
•   <Weapons ID="TerrorDrones1">  -->    <Weapons ID="Terror Drones I">

with the references in each individual treesheet got changed as well, of course.

I've also stripped the Drengin/Korath from the tech "Space Marines" because it makes not really much sense that they have 2 almost identical invasion tech were one will obsolete the other [to counterbalance that this tech is missing I've increased soldiering on Shock Troops by +5 (not really much but their invasion tech is now actually stronger in relation to the previous Marines) but increased techcost by 500 to retain some distance to Adv Troop Mod]

Ok that entry is currently deleted.

Sounds reasonable. In a way I feel reducing PQ won't pay off in the long run and if you're playing with or against a faction building mostly unique improvements then most of them get cleared out anyway, also Core is a tech more late in the tree so should be a tad stronger, so 50-70%.

I also don't use Gas that much since its so lackluster. However, the PQ penalty isn't applied very often, I think this is because the game truncates some numbers. Having the PQ penalty too low may mean there's not even a potential chance on low PQ planets even on unfavourable rolls. I'm gonna reduce the penalty to 5-15% and costs to 150bcs. This is the earliest technique which is not that strong but if we keep it cheap it may still be worthwhile to players w/o more funds.

Well, I went back to ToA 1.97 and the bug is there. In DL 1.0 it's not there but here the techs don't show invasion-techniques at all, neither can you right-click on them, and Space Marines is named Space Marines when somewhere later it got changed to Stellar Marines.

Interestingly, the InvTactics.xml there holds no tech-requirement for TraditionalWarfare & InformationWarfare. I think this is done so that you can still invade planets if you buy Transports from other AI while neglecting research into Planetary Invasion. What do you think about this in the case of TraditionalWarfare? Not that I think such a case would happen often, but the possibility is always there...

Yes, that seemed to be too unintuitive to me as well. Thus, I've made Space Marines untradeable so basically all factions only have one tech that increases its own advantage, except Mass Drivers, but that tech is greatly differentiated from Marines/Drones/Warrior/Troops by its immense destructive potential. And since Yor/Thalan have far less techniques to choose from I think its justified if those become their strongest choice (although this naturally depends on the actual situation).

Well, I didn't do these changes so I can only guess. It's mostly because different people take different basics or stances in their apprehension to change the appearance of the game. As I perceive it, Mabus has a strong incentive towards roleplaying, realism & ingame folklore, which is totally different from my approach to balance by compare objective strengths & weaknesses.

For example, I believe InformationWarfare is the strongest technique because of the crazy shit you can do with it once AI planets are full - mostly are bad at morale. I consistently only build Tiny Hulls w/ a single (Adv.) Troop mod, you can incite an invasion with only 500 soldiers that will become +3000 if you roll high enough for InfoWar, and then you conquer a planet with its own population successfully if you're soldiering is high enough. Which means only a single quite cheap Transport vanishes for each planet, which will keep my own pop high, and I only have to invest about ~25% the MP in building invasion fleets altogether.

Taking InfoWarfare away from Yor (for whatever reasons) was a big nerf and should have been balanced out by giving them something else in that field, that's why I think my change to TerrorDrones is well justified.

Maybe Mabus found it unrealistic that evil-races could convince others to change sides  or even have the possibilty to exist in other society successfully (or, at all) esp. in the case of robotics vs. biological ones - although there are multiples examples in the Sci-Fi universe which approached that subject (eg. in Dune mankind in the 5th millenia lived in a completely robotical machinized society), but frankly, if you just muster enough fantasy everything is possible or imaginable in Sci-Fi so that's why I find argueing about it to be so moot...

ok thanks.

Shouldn't the penatly be -25 instead of -50? Did you delete both -25 entries for each party in PoliticalParties.xml? Maybe something did stack up...

Nevertheless, I've no clue why it got doubled on that campaign, but looking at the sheet for "Nightmare on Dithir" alot of entries under the [Universe] section are 50, perhaps one of these did stack up. I've no clue what all of these entries precisely do. Maybe one does simply double whatever espionage bonus there is in order to promote the building of spies. Perhaps one solution could be to introduce a base bonus to espionage in that particular mission (or others) to make that 0 in total so any multiplicative effects are rendered to nothing as well.

Is there a possible way to start the missions from the campaigns right away? for testing purposes? Because I'm afraid all my saves were lost long time ago....

The easiest and quickest way to fix the scenarios and campaigns is to open the .gc2scenario files with a text editor (like Notepad++) and search for the original InternalName of the techs. If you find them, replace them with the new InternalName. The Scenario Editor also works for this, but it takes much longer to check each file. Plus, the Scenario Editor only uses the core files as a source, so you'd need to replace the base TechTree.xml and the individual tech trees with the changed ones first.

I already had a look at the scenarios and campaigns earlier (in preparation of adding the fix into Autumn Twilight), and fixed them myself. Here are the updated files. Mechanized Warriors and Terror Drones I only needed to be replaced in the Battle of the Gods scenario. Xeno Intimidation also needed to be replaced there and the following campaign missions:

• A Matter of Genocide
• A Nightmare on Dithir
• An Unexpected Visitor
• Bribery and Backstabing
• Ixith
• Return of the Dread Lords
• Salvation
• The Death of the Korx

I'm pretty sure that I got them all, but it's probably safer, if you take another look.

Also, I've noticed that you're download is missing the icons for the Farming tiles, so I've included them here along with replacements for some incorrect/missing Overlay icons. Those will fix the black box in the GNN entry for destroyed Space Miners, among other things.

I'm not sure about this. The reasoning is sound, but I don't like that the Drengin/Korath lose access to a core tactic (Core Detonation) and the Tir-Quan Training GA, just because a newly added custom tactic (Marines) obsoletes their custom replacement (Shock Troops) of a core tactic (Mini-Soldiers). Overall, I'd rather get rid the Marines tactic, but I've already mentioned that before.

I didn't think of that. The game truncates numbers in almost all calculations. If I remember correctly, Range is one of the few exceptions. So, if we went with my suggest max of 10%, then the target planet would have needed to be at least PQ 10, and we would have needed to roll the max 10% before any PQ got lost. Well, with that in mind...

...sounds this far more sensible.

Thanks for looking into it. I must have been misremembering it after all. Or maybe I was thinking of Mini-Soldiers. Ultimate Shock Troops was simply called Shock Troops in DL and DA, so the bug shouldn't have affected it.

In general, my approach is very close to Mabus' (though it drifted a bit more towards "conservatism" since the start of the CU project). However, I often can't agree with his lore-based changes, simply because they're not supported by the lore. Like the change to the alignment of the Terrans and the Drath, for example (thought that one was also bad for gameplay reasons).

True. That is also one of the reasons why farms were so big of an issue. It was an attempt to reduce the possible abuse of IW by increasing the overall approval rating of most AI worlds. Improving the economy of the AI, and reducing the likelihood of the secession event (or whatever it is called again), where the other reasons (at least for me).

Agreed.

I'm using a penalty of -50 in Autumn Twilight, and yes, I made sure that all entries in the PoliticalParties.xml were removed. I've checked it multiple times, including the new entries in the TechTree.xml. The weird part is, if I had missed an entry or set up something wrong, then the Korath would have been affected too. However, they were at -50, while I was at -100.

Sadly no, the only Espionage-related entry is a bolean to either enable or disable Espionage.

Open up the respective .gc2campaign file (either in Notepad++ or the Campaign Editor) and change the Scenario and Map of Mission0 to the mission you want to test.

For example, if you want to test A Nightmare on Dithir, open the file Dark Avatar.gc2campaign and change

[Mission0]
Scenario=A Matter of Genocide.gc2scenario
Map=A Matter of Genocide.GC2Map

to

[Mission0]
Scenario=A Nightmare on Dithir.gc2scenario
Map=A Nightmare on Dithir.GC2Map

I forgot to address this yesterday. Removing the tech requirement from Traditional Warfare would open up some new options. However, it would also be open to abuse, depending on how willing the AI is to sell its transports. I don't know whether the benefits outwheigh the cons, but this is definitely something we could look into.

Speaking of looking into things, I had another look at the Espionage-problem, and got some interesting results:

I first removed the Espionage-penalties from the political parties (making sure I didn't miss any), and added them to Xeno Communications and Universal Translator (-25 each). Then I began the DA campaign and checked the penalty: -50, just as intended.

I then removed the penalties from Xeno Communications and Universal Translator again, and gave the main history tech of each race a single -50 penalty (just like I did in my original attempt). This time the penalty showed -100, once I restarted the DA campaign. I can only surmise that the game is counting the penalty from both the Drengin and the Korath, because both start with the tech A Ruthless History. However, for some reason, only the player gets the doubled penalty.

I have no idea why this is happening, but at least we can be sure that the way you've this up works fine. Still, I'm wondering why we don't assign the penalty to the races directly, instead of using workarounds like techs and political parties? Is there anything speaking against it?

This is actually giving me a headache. Initially I simply set out to make the farmfix-update folder-structure suitable to be played as a mod, so I didn't delete any files just moved folders. I took this https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/107322588/GalCiv/Twilight.zip file given in Reply #1640 on p.66 which should be the latest, but backchecking on it these gfx are missing there too. At that time you've had several testversions up every day or so - are they perhaps cumulative? What am I missing here?

Thanks I'm versed in Notepad++ and making a fulltext search on all opened files is easy. However, before making any new changes the aforementioned issue needs to be clarified.

That's right, Space Marines techs should come back. From there we've got several options:

- Thrown Shock Troops-technique out and let that tech be just a + to soldiering just like it was in TA 2.042. That would be about the most easy as I see it, but also the most boring.

- Another way would be to completely change Shock Troops so it doesn't stand in direct rivalry to Marines. At least, there are 10 invasion-technique icons (in vanilla only 7 in use) so why not use them?

- Regardlessly Marines could be re-named Mini-Soldiers, we'd probably do an icon-change then as well.

For me the biggest prevention of this potential systematic abuse was to take away the ability to place spies on moral buildings - because then some planets got infernally low on moral. Further, if a planet is so high in pop that you can't take it forcefully (or least, with considerable losses) blocking farms + instakilling all pop reliant on them is also no more possible.

I think I know at what you're trying to aim at - but that's already currently possible. If you just get your hands on a transport even w/o PI researched and arrive at a target planet it'll incite an invasion. What bugs me is that you're taken to the screen prompted to select an invasion-technique - but there is none available. Still, the text & icon of TraditionalWarfare is shown, and the battle is also "fought with it" - this seems to be an oversight or weakness in the code, it looks awkward. The possibility that this might happen must've been forgotten when the reqs of Trad.Invasion got changed, because such a change would call for new lines of code which would make invasions generally unavailable if PI hasn't been researched, or at least, none inv-technique is available.

That's interesting. What's happening if you assign other ratings to this tech - get they doubled as well? I'd like to find out exactly what triggers it. History-techs are labelled & categorized as Culture - and they're not the only ones. Maybe that bug applies somewhere else, too. The Drengin & Korath do most likely also have other starting techs in common - do their bonuses get doubled as well?

Now this is a guess on my part but I've been under the impression that a Campaign/Scenario hands out a bunch of extra starting techs sort of getting an accelerated start.... Are these techs specified and is "A Ruthless History" or "Innovative History" amongst them? That tech is also added by the racial from "RaceConfig.xml" - perhaps they're added two times..?

My main intention was to hide that, since its a fix that will work fine in the background, and players shouldh't worry too much about it. Having that attached to the Parties is actually the worst option because even after gamestart it'll still stick to the screen on the related sheet. Having it the racial directly is better - IF it can't be circumvented by the Custom Race.

Nevertheless, it would still be a bit annoying there, IMO, the racials are -more or less- a hint of potential design strategies. Take the Torians for example, Popgrowth + Morale in pre-CU --> best popgrowth-race with strongest morale improvements + 1 an extra farm baseline. In CU added loyalty though their worlds usually have no trouble with fliping to enemies that much, rather the opposite.

Ofc that's not always followed, eg. Yor have strong starting stats to compensate for crippled tree... or Altarians undergo change and become better in weapons than everybody else (except Thalans), or Arceans (chaotically nonspecified....) but for the other it sort of holds true.

But yeah, having techs with penalties is also not overtly elegant it may even throw new players off from researching down that route if they don't understand the importance of the cultural branch or overvalue espionage. I'm still trying to think of a more elegant (=hidden) solution....

I didn't include the icons there, because they weren't needed. The zip-file was primarily intended for Stardock, so they could easily implement the updated files into the game. All they need to do to re-enable the farming tile icons is to remove the folder Twilight\Gfx\PlanetBonuses which contains the blank versions of those icons.

Which issue do you mean exactly?

Shock Troops originally unlocked Mini-Soldiers, while Stellar Marines unlocked Core Detonation (and still does). I don't see why we can't keep it that way. My only issue with Mini-Soldiers is, that using robots for invasion doesn't fit the Drengin MO. They use specifically bred and/or genetically engineered soldiers (like the Korath) for this. That's why I originally replaced Mini-Soldiers with the Shock Troops tactic (though a simple change to the name and description would have sufficed, in hindsight).

Really!? Well, in that case, we might as well remove the tech requirement from Traditional Warfare. It apparently serves no purpose.

Yes to all of this. I've just tested it, and that's exactly what happens! I still don't understand why this only happens to the player, and not the AI races, but at least we now know what causes it. Industrial Revolution is the only starting tech with an abilitiy bonus, which is probably why I've never noticed it. Plus, my time testing the campaigns and scenarios was spent primarily on making sure that the restricted and starting techs had been set correctly.

Anyhow, the main question is now, what are we going to do with this? Are we going to fix all affected scenarios and campaign missions, remove the Social Production bonus from Industrial Revolution, or leave things as they are?

All in all, I would leave it be. The bonus is small enough to barely matter (only 10%), and it doesn't get applied to either the regular game or the Metaverse (so no undue advantage there). Plus, fixing the campaigns and scenarios would take more time than it is worth it, in my opinion.

No, Custom Races can't circumvent this. Their entry in the RaceConfig.xml works just like any other. If you assign a ability bonus/penalty there, then all Custom Races will start with that bonus/penalty. Sure, the player can spent points to customise the value, but the extent of this is limited and means less points for other abilities.

Well, we could make a new tech to apply the Espionage penalty. If we set the Cost to 0, we can make sure that players using a custom race can't circumvent this by simply not taking the tech. It's not a perfect solution, but it would be a bit less "in your face".

I understand. I just wanted to erase any doubts that I was working on an incomplete archive for a base...

But that was in DL/DA. In pre-CU-TA Shock Troops-tech is only available for Drengin/Korath and Mini-Soldiers was basically available to most races, its in the generic tree. I understand that tech Space Marines offers perhaps a little too much (Soldiering, GA, 2*Invasion-techniques) and your proposal would correct that.

But you would also take Mini-Soldiers away from a lot of races, and they wouldn't have any comparative invasion technique, ie. others are either much more destructive or don't enhance own advantage.

Ok, I'll add that to the list.

It's in the nature of bugs to behave chaotically, but good to know what is at large here. Perhaps the weak code is located in the universe-generation, which, by all means, should be different code for player and AIs, but that's just a guess.

I agree, just leave it be. 10% isn't a big deal and will go unnoticed anyway.

I like this. IRRC a tech at cost = 0 is automatically "researched" even at any gamestart, if you pick it or not. Does this apply to the AI as well?

***

Well, I just did some tests and I'm afraid I can't get it to work - only testing on player currently.

If the tech is either cost = 0 or 1 then it'll appear as being researched right away but its bonus is not counted in. Advancing turns or saving/reloading has also no effect, nor does changing the ability bonus, make it positive or affect another ingame stats. Can you confirm this?

Hi guys,

It's been a while. First, let me address points made in recent posts.

Screens

I wasn't comfortable with including any changes/fixes in screens in the new update back then and I said so. The existing ones were well tested and Spinorial's did manual edits instead of using DesktopX (the took SD used to develop the screen). It has been months since I said this and if no problems have arisen I recon they won't.

Information Warfare

Information Warfare was moved to Diplo 2. Since the Dregin/Korath do not have Diplo 2 they got their own version of Information Warfare.

Tech Costs = 0

Techs with cost = 0 show up as researched but do not give a bonus. The minimum cost = 5. I tested this extensively.

This is also goodbye. Good luck patching the CU.

Kind regards,

Anthony

Yes, the Shock Troops-tech became Drengin/Korath-only when TotA came out. However, it still remained the requirement for Mini-Soldiers. That never changed in pre-CU TotA.

Well, that was already the case in pre-CU TotA. Also, is it really necessary for all races to have similar types of tactics?

Yes, I can confirm this. Well, so much for that idea. Are we going to apply the penalty to the races directly then, or do we keep them on Xeno Communications/Universal Translator (or some other tech players need to research)?

Well, I didn't find the post you made about it back then very clear on the matter. Especially because the version you told me to rollback to already contained some UI changes. That's why I tried several times to get clarification from you, but it never came.

Also, how was Spinorial supposed to use DesktopX to make those edits? Stardock stopped selling it several years ago.

I already know that. It's the reason behind those changes I'm asking about: Why did Information Warfare got moved to Diplo 2? Why have the Yor been restricted from getting access to Information Warfare?

Yeah, I just found this out myself. At least this technique can be used to unlock buildings and ship/starbase modules. It's still disappointing though.

Got the inspiration from a (once) popular DL mod. Information Warfare always seemed overpowered to me, especially against the AI. Since it's a diplomatic invasion technique it seemed appropriate to move it to a semi-advanced stage in diplomatic development. As for the Yor. It felt right, that's about it. They're terrible diplomats, yet they can convince people to defect? Never seemed appropriate to me. 

It was to me as well. 0 cost tech could have been a wonderful way to patch in all sorts of stuff. To bad I suppose.

There's still copies floating around if you look hard enough. At the time I did not feel comfortable with manually edited screen files. Who knows what kind of trouble could have cropped up in the long run? But its been months since I said  that. If they work, they work.

I'm sorry you're right, I must have looked at a wrong version. Sure, why not. Korath need it only in the customrace-case, and Drengin are supposed to be good soldiers, plus their version of IW is a tad weaker.

The generic tree still has 5 different tactics to choose from, not counting TraditionalWarfare. Drengin/Korath 1 more, while Yor/Thalan/Iconian 2 less.

I'll implement the changes on the WE, got too much to do here currently, and we're not in a hurry anyway...

I'll add it to the racial. That way it can't be cirumvented/delayed and I don't have to come up with a bogus-explanation for the <description> and <details> tags why suddenly a penalty is there...

A final risk is always there, that's right, even if you use software. If someone is well versed with working with the code manually I'll trust that more than someone who is a newbie on a particular software. And even software can create bugs or weak code, just take a look at the GC2 techtree-editor....

If one is unsure, it simply boils down to invest more time to do a variety of thorough tests. We've never been really under time-pressures, except for some deadlines - which, after all, were self-imposed.