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Reply to A thought on modding races and balance. in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

I was going to post a longer reply here, but that really sums it all up. I do agree that having colonizing minors (a mod I also use) is probably the best of both worlds between having deliberately handicapped races and giving everyone a fair shot. The colonizing minors are no pushovers, but they certainly aren't likely to ever win, and that seems like a good thing to me. I have been experimenting with trying to get races that play differently then the norm, but di

Reply to Is it worth using espionage against the Dread Lords? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Using race-wide agents on the Dread Lords doesn't do much good. You should get to at least "low" intelligence on them so you can track their ships, but beyond that it doesn't do much. However, as Zarnick says, using spies to sabotage them is a whole lot more effective. They never nullify them, and enough spies hammering a DL world makes it take forever for them to build a ship. I would definitely recommend it if you have the agents to spare.

Reply to Thalans: Stop using beam weapons all of the time! in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

In my current game, I have a custom opponent with the Thalan personality, but not their tech tree, using missiles. This suggests that if this isn't one giant coincidence, whatever's causing it is probably related to the Thalan tech tree. I'm not finding that this really hurts them, though - typically, it seems like beams are a minority weapon in most of my games, which makes this an advantage for the Thalan, as less races are likely to have defenses against them.

Reply to Korx Quirks in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Could you post a debug.err from a crash and your race config file for the Korx here?

Reply to Is there a way to see how far ships can move in a turn? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

There's an option to turn on a movement grid that can help a lot. It's kind of ugly, so I don't have it enabled as a normal thing, but you can bring it up in special circumstances.

Reply to Twilight: Tolmekian's TechTree Fix v3.51 Release 05-10-13 in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="irrevenant" reply="65" id="2987047"]This is a very awesome mod. I was wondering: Is it possible to separate "Fix the stuff that's broken in ToA" into a separate mod from personal balance changes and improvements? Things like removing Ultimate and unique racial weapons, standardising the weapons costs across types, changing how starbases work etc. probably make for a better game but they also make for a much different game and it would be really nic

Reply to Random events discussion thread in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="dnzrx" reply="14" id="2986947"]Someone mentioned this on Youtube and I want to know if it is true?[/quote] Nope. There's an unlimited range event, but logistics will cap out eventually.

Reply to Galactic Balance in Metaverse GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="dnzrx" reply="3" id="2986899"]Beware though, they have the powerful technology known as the Disruptor Beam Weapon. Once they are out, then prepare for some serious hurt and noise (seriously, the sound effects for them are too loud!)[/quote] If you think that's bad, try having a massive battle with Pulse Cannons sometimes. Eeesh. Went to "no sound in space" for the duration of that game. On-topic, in my experience the Thalans actually tend to do much better on l

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Inspection of their tech tree doesn't show any cause for it - maybe it is just a coincidence, but it's a pretty strange one if so. Some of the other races have preferences for certain weapons types (Torians and mass drivers, for instance), but only the Thalans have stuck to one exclusively.

Reply to What is your typical fleet composition? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

It really depends a lot on the game. Generally, I use a mixture of the two biggest hull sizes I have for most fleets, although I almost never use tiny hulls and I rarely get Massive Scale Building unless an AI does, so in practice this means small/medium fleets early on and large/medium fleets later on. I tend to have 4 basic ship roles for medium and larger ships: Planetary defender - no engines, no life support, lots of weapons and defenses. Occasionally supplemented by small

Reply to MarvinKosh's Space Weapons Fix Mod v6B (updated 31/08/2014) in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

I've just noticed that in more than 40 games on TA, I have never seen the Thalans use any weapons type beside beam weapons. It happened both before and after I did some modding to the Thalan tech tree, but I'm fairly sure this can't be a coincidence - while other races do seem to "favor" certain weapons types, only the Thalans have always done things this way. Anyone else seen this happen?

Reply to Random events discussion thread in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="Songemot" reply="6" id="2985008"]At one point earlier in the game, the Drath got that god-like event and they've been getting stronger and stronger. Sure, they're one of my allies, but I still want to fight them at some point. I'll have to think about the best way to go about this...[/quote] Are you sure it's the mega event version? There's two types of that event - the normal one, which isn't very dangerous at all, and the mega event, which is. You

Reply to Off Type Defenses Not Registering in Bug Reports GalCiv2 Forums

While off-type defenses do still help your defense some, you won't be seeing them do it. As I understand it, the shields still contribute to your defenses, but they'll only be shown against the weapons type they're designed to counter.

Reply to The Kushana Initiative - Play By Council in AARs GalCiv2 Forums

Councilors, commander. As their trading partner and friend, I feel it is our obligation to support the Gnolams against the Yor. However, I would oppose military involvement at this time. The Yor, at present, do not pose a particular threat to either our civilization or the Gnolams, and I do not at present see a need for us to send our forces to fight them. However, I do strongly support providing technological, monetary, or other non-military forms of aid. Should we receive a formal r

Reply to Has anyone ever encountered strong Korx or Drath on TA? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

Out of curiosity - since you're encountering consistently strong Korath, does that mean you switched their AI, or are you actually getting that kind of performance out of the original Korath AI?

Reply to Docile Peacekeepers? in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]What is going in and how to get them angry?[/quote] Trying shooting at them - that'll do the trick. Actually, it's a known "bug" (possibly a deliberate feature, though) that the Peacekeepers don't always come in at war with everybody. The Galactic Civilizations wiki mentions in their article on the Peacekeepers, and I've seen it other places, though it didn't happen on the one occasion I met them. Like I said, if you want them to become hosti

Reply to This is a joke, correct? in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Why were you even offering the deal to begin with?

Has anyone ever encountered strong Korx or Drath on TA? in Galactic Civilizations II GalCiv2 Forums

As some of you may know, I've been one of several people attempting to mod out some of the flaws of the TA AIs, trying to create a balanced situation like DA, where any race could do well depending on circumstances. With my current set of mods, I've almost achieved that goal - most races now have an equal chance. However, three continue to remain at the bottom in every game - the Korx, Drath, and Arceans. I've identified the Arcean speed penalty as the chief reason they al

Reply to Kushana Initiative Planning and Discussion in AARs GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="Tolmekian" reply="200" id="2981692"]It took long enough, but there it is. I actually played it out early-mid July, but didn't get time to post. I'm out of town for the weekend, which is why I just pasted it up to get it done. What next, councilors?[/quote] Now that the briefing is finally done, I guess we all start posting.

The pacifists prevail in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

Note: this may belong better in AARs, but since this relates to the modding projects I've been doing, I thought I'd post it here. So I ran another AI vs. AI test game ("playing" as a minor race) the other day, studying some of the AIs that have been having problems, and a few I don't play against that much. The AIs were the Terrans, Krynn, Arceans, Torians, Korx, Drath, Thalan, Iconians - an even mixture of AIs set to personalities 8 and 11 - and Korath using their origina

Reply to Galaxy Setup - the Key to a Good Game in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="Ashantai" reply="25" id="2980013"]On an immense map, how many years does a typical game run?[/quote] That's hard to say, as it depends a lot on the player, settings, and difficulty level. Against 9 Tough AIs, I've found games lasting about 10-12 years at maximum, rarely ending before year 8. I've never won a conquest victory on Immense, though, so I'd imagine that might take longer.

Reply to Galaxy Setup - the Key to a Good Game in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

Mega events are a specific set of events intended to be destabilizing, but they don't include all events that might be destabilizing - the Diplomatic Assassination event above is a "normal" event that can't be turned off. You can find them listed in your English.str file (open with Notepad or something similar) or you can search the forums for threads on them. Note that, contrary to what some of the threads say, the infamous "Jagged Knife" are a mega event and shouldn't a

Reply to Minor Races in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

No. While it is possible to mod minor races a great deal (including giving them the ability to colonize), the naming system they use appears to be hard-coded in. There is no way to avoid it other then manually renaming their planets and star systems in-game.

Reply to TotA disappointment in Twilight of the Arnor GalCiv2 Forums

[quote who="Noctilucus" reply="3" id="2978843"]In ToA it's much more of a hit-or-miss; while in DA or DL just about any race could emerge victorious once in a while, in ToA some races are nearly always sitting ducks while others always tend to take the first spot.[/quote] In my experience, at least, modding does a lot for that. The Arceans, Korx, and Drath still seem to do badly most of the time, but overall a lot more races have a chance at the top spot then they did in the unmod

Reply to Modding AIs in Modding GalCiv2 Forums

As far as I know you can't mod the actual AI modules themselves, but you can make significant improvements to the TOA AIs in two ways: AI personalities 7 (Drengin, Yor, Korath) and 10 (Torians, Iconians) are bugged, but AI personalities 8 and 11 are not. Switching the bugged AIs to one of those personalities will cause a significant improvement in their behavior (although I would keep the Korath on 7, because it's the only way they will use spore ships. With the right s