Cheats!

It's been remapped to Ctrl+Shift+N.

Yes, all cheats works fine.

Thank you so much for the information guys! I really appreciate it.

Didn't there also use to be a cheat that forced the other civilizations to agree to anything you demanded through diplomacy? I'm pretty sure I used it before, just to tidy up the universe a bit by giving races planets that were in their borders but owned by other civs, but maybe i'm dreaming...

Nubie Q: How can I activate cheats?  I added to the starting shortcut word "cheat", but Cntl+U to open map still does not work. Please help, since you obviously do get what you need. Thanks.

You've added it to the launcher shortcut, you need a shortcut to GC2TwilightOfTheArnor.exe/GC2DarkAvatar.exe/GalCiv2.exe, found in the same folder as the respective launchers.

However, I don't believe cheats are necessary for the open map function-in fact, there seems to be a different function assigned to Ctrl+U while in cheat mode.

Sole Soul, how would you then open the map (as if you have already scouted the whole area)? I want to start playing on a higher difficulty for the AI on tiny map, but would like to give myself the best chance by knowing in what direction to expand.

Also, I chose abundent extreme planets and myself as isolationist, but out of 10-15 extreme planets I have seen from discovering 20-25% of the map, NONE were Barren. The bulk was Aquatic and Radioactive, and one Heavy Gravity. I would like to open map and find out if some extreme planets are more likely then the other - it will influence usefulness of two super traits that give early colonizing ability.

Thanks.

I knew I forgot something-I haven't personally messed around with the open map function, babunito.  My apologies, but I can't help in that regard.  Time permitting, I'll give it a look and maybe post back, but I'm not going to pretend that I know anything about it before checking it myself.

The first thing I would look for is if you actually have cheat mode enabled, though, as that would overwrite Ctrl+U's "normal" function of loading the map.  But if you tried before enabling cheat mode, than that's not it.

This map generator would seem to suggest that there's a different probability for each one.  While manually generating isn't quite the same as saving an automatically generated map, it might actually be more useful for your intended purpose.  I would recommend against going overboard, though.

In any case, it would appear based on replies to the thread referenced above that the map generator's maps work for TA as well.

Sole Soul - thank you very much for the links!!! Map generator is indeed a very nifty tool that greatly expands potential gaming scenarios.

Your previous suggestion regarding adding "cheat" to direct shortcut vs. launcher’s shortcut was right on the spot - I spend past 6 hours opening maps, generating all planetary and mega events, etc - plain fun. I also can confirm that game's default relative probabilities for different hostile environment planets are equal. Data for 61 hostile planets collected from several generated tiny galaxies:

          Planets   %-age

Aquatic    14      23%

Heavy G   12      20%

Toxic       11      18%

Barren     10      16%

RadioAct  14      23%

Standard Deviation for this Binomial Distribution is 3, which makes about 5%. One can see that none of the %-ages deviate from 20% (equivalent to equal weights of 1/5 -> 20%) by more then 4%. In hypothesis testing language one would state that each type's probability difference from 20% is not statistically significant, hence all equal to 20%.

The cool thing about map generator is ability to change those relative weights, thus altering game balance to one's liking.

My initial experience with no Barren planets was due to normal stochastic fluctuation (there were only 4 Barren planets out of 26 hostile ones) and my choice of "tight clusters", which placed all Barren planets in one quadrant. Later regenerations with equal spread resulted in a much better mix of hostile planets through galaxy.