Mod Conflict?

I am new at this as well and had the same problem last month, but now I have many of the approved mods all working together; plus I corrected numerious spelling errors, ID conflicts, and description texts which were too long (the game won't display them properly). I learned how to use an earlier verion of the GC Writer offered in another thread, and it help greatly once I figured it out; but it does take a lot of time. Anyway, I'll make the combined collection of mods available to you later this evening when I have time to up-load them to my ftp site. Anyway the mods I have have been modified slightly to accomodate my tastes plus game play balancing with my own changes. It sounds like you may like it. I've also expanded a mod related to the Borg much more; plus added a telapath technology chain (plus improvements, wonders, etc). Both chains will allow creation of a major telapathic or Borg empire. Saddly, I wasn't able to come up with a graphic for a Borg Cube Ship (yet... very time consuming). I'll post a link in this thread later this evening.

Thanks Chippoka! I am stumpped.

New update on conflicts. I used GalCiv Writer 2.0 to try and find any problem. I fixed alot of the spelling, long discriptions etc. Did write to file and poof now I have no starbase modules when I try to upgrade a starbase. The screen comes up with the list to the left "Military" etc., but there is not one entry in any of the pick lists in the upgrade screen. I downloaded the clean data files and cleaned everything out. I only have starbase modules if I disable mods. Unfortunately I have become very fond of all those mods.

Very upsetting. I have been playing Civ3 for a long time until I found GalCiv early in the summer. I was thrilled! Long time SciFi nut LOL I am ready to uninstall. I have learned way more than I ever wanted to learn about writing mods. If anyone wants a copy of the improvements mods in divided files "modtradegoods" "modachievements" "modimprovements" "modwonders" let me know. No since in wasting all that work. I have an excel file with a page for each techs, improvements, achievements, tradegoods, wonders listing them by the ID numbers, some numbers have been change to fix original mod ID conflicts. It's not quite finished but if someone wants a copy I will finish it.

Don't sweat it, you'll get it working!

When using the old GC writer, be extra careful in naming files and what you copy and paste when doing things. I use the CG Data folder directly with a backup in a folder called "Previous Data_1." Make sure no duplicate files exist in the folder under different names. I have had the same starbase module problem as you! It was a pain to fix! To fix:

1. Get your file in the GC Data folder.

2. Run GC Write against each category (improvements, etc. Check every detail! And write down IDs to track them to be sure they are ok! At one point my IDs were so messed up due to GC Writer trying to fix duplicates, I had to loose my some of mod work and restore earlier work.

Get just the base data files working (no mods). And run the game and be sure your starbase is working (make it low cost so that you don't need to test long). Next, add in your mod tech files one at a time and run GC on each, checking them as it goes. Test the results to see if the starbase is still ok (should have no effect).

Add improvements one group or file at a time. And run GC Writer likewise as before (with tech files present). Test the starbase. And be sure you are not being allowed to build lots of improvements without having to invent the tech. If that happens, you need to go back to each improvement and set the tech_requirement field to the tech needed for activation (name or number, as needed). GC Writer loves to erase the tech requirement numbers and/or noun names when it gets confused about what tech does what when IDs are messed up as duplicate Tech numbers or duplicate requirement IDs in improvement files. If a data file is ok, be sure to make a minor change in order to make it write the whole thing to file; refresh, and be sure it didn't mess any thing up. And never try to work improvement file by themselves without the associate tech files also present in the folder. I did that once! Woops!

Once done, add your mod ship data files and check them.

Hopefully this will get you straight and the starbase modules working again. Check thier IDs also are ok and correctly associate to correct technologies requirement IDs; that is where the problem was in my case, if I recall properly.

Remember this too (from another thread at this site):



IDs:

a) The range of possible IDs for Wonders is 1-149.

The range of possible IDs for Achievements is 1-253.

c) The range of possible IDs for Trade Goods is 1-49.



See here for my set of combined mods from this site plus a few of my own (play tested and play balanced, howbeit to my own tastes - I play Altarian Phophesy version, but these should work in CG as well):

http://users.rcn.com/aulonacara/Galatic%20Civ/

SciFi nut... heh, me too!

I have all the DVDs available for Star Trek Generations, DS-9, the Movies, and Voyager

Plus FarScape, Earth Final Conflict, Star Gate (can't wait for season 8), Babylon 5, Battle Star Galactica, and Andromeda... plus others and various SciFi movies as well.

From another post:

"#7 by Diplomat Arturus Magi - 12/10/2004 12:15:53 PM


Another possible cause: GalCiv Writer, in my experience, always renumbers BOOKMARK to 52, and BOOKMARK denotes the end of the list of SBMods. Manually renumber BOOKMARK to something arbitrarily high (I usually use 200), make a do nothing module to take it's place, and see if that fixes the problem too."

Thank you so much for your help Chippoka. I have checked all techs, improvements, achievements, wonders and tradegoods visually and with Galciv Writer. I disabled mods and everything works fine even the starbase modules came back. Bookend is numbered at 200. I enabled mods and began a game it didn't take long to see a problem. The hugh unearned planet bonuses are back. The fifth planet I colonized immediately had the following:(original PQ 19, pq after colonization 95)
Production +479%
Morale +200%
Research +405
Economy +300
PQ +85
Starships +75

Galaxy wide abilities are through the roof also. I have used the cheat keys to speed up this test. Do the cheat keys corrupt the game?

The whole purpose of using the cheat keys was to quickly work through the tech tree to get a better understanding of tech strategy. During this test I moved back and forth between good, neutral and evil to see the tech tree in it's complete form.

I have read so many posts about modding and using mods. The only thing I have not been able to find, and I may have missed it somewhere is: is there a cap on how many starbase modules the game will support. I have 169.
LOL
Ok, so I like lots of bell and whistles.............
There are so many mods, I would really like to see what the game is like with them all working.
Currently I also have 368 Techs, 88 normal improvements, 40 achievements, 51 wonders and 45 tradegoods.

Don't get me wrong, morale at +200 is wonderful. My citizens can be taxed at 100% and my approval rating is 100. It just takes all the fun out of the game.

~SDC~

Cheat Keys... err I'm clueless on what they are... but, with my PC and making my own maps to play on... having my own strategies and using the mod combination I do... well, I find no need for them. The game really is pretty easy; esp if going for a cultural victory. Try taking a look at those data files I gave a link for ealier; you'll see what I mean.

Gotta run to work; I be back this evening to reply to other stuff.

I don't quite go as far as you do; but fun and/or challenge is the goal, so great for you! And may all the mods work together for you! In my case, I try to keep things play balanced, but for a faster paced game (my time is limited) permitting any choice of govenment + picks to lead to a victory of several types(on a fair map, of course). I still lose from time to time, and lose a lot if I make too many of the AI's too difficult. So I'm no expert, but I do enjoy the game greatly for the ability to customize to to my own particular tastes as you have.

I have also discovered that so many mods boost PQ and Moral, that I made some technologies paths lead to reducing these things in exchange for other bebefits... more interesting... imagine a Borg world with a PQ of 10, but with very loyal citizens; heh, all Borg, of course, and Borg can care less for high PQs. So, I have the advancement in the Borg technologies slowly reduce PQ as the player's culture evolves into Borg. Of course, there are lots of other possiblities, even REDUCIING ship speeds, he, he, when building some improvement... like: "Your lab facility for quantum sub-space research will help boost your research 25 percent, but... woops, your investigation of quantum filaments have caused great damage to sub-space: ship speed -50% galaxy-wide"

I have been using the cheat keys to fast forward through the tech tree. I have been watching what order the other races research tech and trying to get a handle on the tech tree. The other cheat key I use is to change the starting location. Sometimes the AI puts me in a small corner with all the alien races so close I am almost immediately boxed in and my range won't allow me to colonize more than a few star systems. One map I had 6 star systems that had habitable planets within my range until very far into the game. It didn't seem very balanced. The alien races had 12 or more. When learning a new game I like to watch how the AI plays so the cheat keys let me do that.

I have been looking at your files. If I can't get this anomolous bonus problem fixed I am going to uninstall and reinstall and try your set up. I like the -% PQ to keep that bonus level down. Interesting idea.

I'm still trying to understand how everything works together so I haven't played over the normal level. Most irratating is loosing to a bunch of morons. LOL

~SDC~

Oh, BTW I do play GC-AP. I was looking back and realized I never said that.

~SDC~

You can get this info without resorting to using cheat keys: the debug.err file is your friend

Well, I'm still learning the details, so my mod stuff at my ftp site linked earlier may not work. I still have the problem of my terror stars refusing to move, even without mods! It might be a problem from when I moved the harddrive into my new PC. I had to reinstall some software, but not GC/AC... I may need to do do this. Also, the mod stuff I linked to doesn't include a few of the little graphics pictures that the mods came with. I forgot about those... hopefully they'll work without them (the goverment icons, for example). If your try the mods, just store your work in a seperate folder; you'll always have the ability to go back to your stuff later that way. I think next time I'll just put of a few save games on turn 1, that way you won't need the mods (as I understand it, the saved games will play with the mods installed when it was saved; i.e., saved with the mods it was using at the time).

I played through the mods as a game last night and saw some bad issues since my Borg mod isn't completely finished. The tech didn't let me make a certain trade good which made it possible for the Borg to "assimilate" during planet invasions (soldiers +500... very late in the tech tree)... the other tech path for telapathic race developement worked well for the Alterians who eventually gained a similar soldier ability to represent telapathic conquest from orbit (as in Master Of Orion II when choosing a similar trait). Needless to say, I had a hard time defeating the Alterians. I had to use an invasion mod tactic "Scorched Earth."

But I'm slowly getting better at this mod stuff. I sucessfully tested my first Borg Cube ship graphic, and this time it worked without any background problems (revealing the stars near it as it turned, etc).

AI play balance. Remember! They are wayyyy bettter than you economicly, etc, if you decide to let them to be more than "normal" difficulty in the pre-game menus, so it really isn't unfair. That is how the AIs provide more challenge to better players Choose "Normal" or less ability for AI skill level and make your comparisions to those degrees of less difficulty for a more "fair" analysis. As I see it, if a player sets all the AI players to "Incredible" difficulty, then the game aught to be impossible to win except under the most perfect galaxy arrangement to your advantage while to thier disadvantage; and the player being an expert.

That quote doesn't really apply in this particular case, although it is something that needs to be watched.




The symptoms you describe here are exactly what I saw when I ran into the 'too many improvements' issue, with one exception. I also saw improvements randomly being unbuildable on certain planets.

Check and see if improvements are mysteriously dissapearing. If so, try removing some of the ones you don't use often.
~SDC~
[Message Edited]

Thanks for all the help.

I removed improvements and all the problems went away.



~SDC~