New tech tree

I did notice the economy flowed super easy as things got going. There are two problems that I see causing it.
-Buildings in Civ4 don't require maintenance, but buildings cost a LOT in MoO2. Is there a way to have buildings cost gold?
-Freighters aren't used so players don't have to pay to ship food to barren planets. I think this is fine and I don't think we should worry about trying to include freighters.

I don't like changing the gold build rate to 25% because it will cause people to build research all the time instead of gold. Research is still at 100% and I don't know what it actually should be. It probably could be lowered to 50%

I think we should modify the research buildings to help fix the imbalance:
Research lab:
+5 rp +5% rp +1 culture (was +5 rp, +5% rp, +1Culture, and +1 gold)

University:
+10 rp, +5% rp, +1 culture (was +10rp, +1 culture)

Galactic Cybernet:
+15 rp, +5% rp, +1 culture (was +15 rp, +1 culture, +3 gold)

Also change, the holo simulator, pleasure dome, and virtual reality network to +20% rp instead of +20% gold.

Then if money becomes too scarce after these changes we can increase tweak the gold producing buildings.
What do you think of this?

To be honest, I think it's creating a lot of work just to get around having +50% credits generating. So I'd humbly suggest reverting to the old situation - even then in the late game credits never were/are a problem.

As to the holo simulator, pleasure dome, and virtual reality network to +20% rp instead of +20% gold, I seem to recall these were happiness-related in MoO, not credit or research (although increased happiness would ofcourse result in more credits/research).

Ah, I see where the problem is...
What I changed was the cost of the project to build gold (or trade goods in MoO2). It was set to where 100 % of the hammers (industry) was converted to gold, though MoO2 didn't do that, only 1 gold was produced for every 2 industry spent on building trade goods. It seemed to me more balanced to set the production of trade goods at the ratio.

I see.

About the latest tech tree version: Ive started one or two games and progressed beyond turn 125 (on different maps and difficulties); I'm inclined to think that both I and the AI are getting used to it and the both of us seem to get along fine with it. There don't seem to have arisen any issues, except perhaps that barb activity seems to be lower than before; I reckon it's because the races build more ships sooner and take them out as they go. (Haven't tried above Hard level - nor the Raging Barbs option -, but this seems to take care of the "wacky powerful barbarians" issue.)

Version 1.2b out!

Good to hear that it works. I am surprised how well the AI works with it, I don't think I need to change the AIWeight for each new tech level. Especially Minor Annoyance makes his changes to the leaderhead file.

Now I plan to change the descriptions and rename some of the <type> names from Final Frotier's name to MoO2Civ's name to make future editing easier.

After that all I think needs done is to fix bugs and make balance tweaks.

Take note of the doomstar unit I added. It's just a copy of the titan but with more carrying capacity, city bombard ability, and a new name. It will need balanced and new pictures and such but inserting the unit into the game is a start.

I also made the doomstar III require hyper advanced physics and force fields. Those techs are no longer repeatable.

Wow, you're way ahead of me! Adding a new Doomstar class is great. (I was thinking of replacing the Invasion Ship slots with a Transport, Doomstar and possibly a Guardian unit, but haven't gotten around to it yet.) Will check it out ASAP.

You might want to add to post #1 that the files should be placed in MOO2Civ/Assets/XML, just to be sure.

So the AI's use of units is bugging me, especially with all those infantry wandering around in space, and attacking with armors and destroyers instead of battleships and titans. I'm trying to learn what the different UnitAIs mean so I can fix them. I can't find a list anywhere so I'm starting a thread in the civ4 modding forum to try to get some input. Just to let you guys know

Oh, and a question, since currently infantry units are useless for attacking cities I'm going to set them as only city defenders. Will that be fine? It can always be changed later when the transport is added and they get used to attack planets.

Seems fine to me (although, to be true, a bit redundant: only the barbs use them currently to futilely attack systems). I was actually thinking of reducing all Marine/Armor/Robo-Warrior strength by -1 (they're currently hugely overpowered vs. space ships). This would also be preliminary to introducing the Transport unit (and removing the Invasion Ship class).

BTW, something I noticed earlier, but forgot to mention: there are currently multiple dead end techs (they don't link to the next advance). I don't research those now, just wait if the AI does and trade if I like the tech.

JEELEN said:

Seems fine to me (although, to be true, a bit redundant: only the barbs use them currently to futilely attack systems.)

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I've had the AI attack my cities with infantry almost every time. It makes their attack fleet take 30 turns just to get to me and I usually have them killed with a starbase and bombers before they can shoot. That's mostly why I decided to go looking how to fix it.
Also, I actually have been hit by missiles quite a lot. The AI doesn't seem to use them unless I've bombed him or something to make him mad but they do at least try to use them. I bet I could tweak the UnitAI and make them used better.

JEELEN said:

I was actually thinking of reducing all Marine/Armor/Robo-Warrior strength by -1 (they're currently hugely overpowered vs. space ships). This would also be preliminary to introducing the Transport unit (and removing the Invasion Ship class).

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I would rather see the infantry beat a space ship in planet combat because in MoO2 you couldn't capture a city with just space ships. I think they would still be strong enough with a -1 though because they can be produced so cheaply.

JEELEN said:

BTW, something I noticed earlier, but forgot to mention: there are currently multiple dead end techs (they don't link to the next advance). I don't research those now, just wait if the AI does and trade if I like the tech.

Click to expand...

As far as I know there are two dead end techs in the biology group that don't advance, but that's because they are just placeholders (actually I'll disable them because they don't need to be there). I haven't seen any other techs that don't go on to the next group yet but I'm sure they're out there. If you could tell me which techs they are I'll fix them.


That just gave me an idea, what if the Elarian capital ships got a bonus against all infantry to simulate their mind control ability?? Like +100% vs infantry?

My next changes will be:
-Decrease fighter/bomber range:
fighter I & II = 3, heavy fighter = 4
bomber I & II = 4, heavy bomber = 5
-Decrease missile range to similar to bomber's range +1 (or less).
-Improve UnitAI's (specifically no attacking with infantry!)
-Disable empty biology techs
-Decrease infantry strength -1
-Fix Armor and Batteloid building dependency again (it's still not right)

(that's getting rather close to looking like another major update... )

What if we changed the infantry <iMoves> to -3 so they can't move at all, even after being upgraded?

I tested it and it does work.

fulano said:

That just gave me an idea, what if the Elarian capital ships got a bonus against all infantry to simulate their mind control ability?? Like +100% vs infantry?

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Ya, I see they edited the promotion schema and added a telepathic option to it. What does it do exactly? I'll admit I've no idea what the differences between races is. Maybe I should go check the civilopedia.

That's easy to check on the start up screen if you mouse over all the races. I hadn't noticed the 'telepathic option', but the Elerians' telepathy should give them an edge to all personel/manned ships, not just ground forces.

fulano said:

I've had the AI attack my cities with infantry almost every time. It makes their attack fleet take 30 turns just to get to me and I usually have them killed with a starbase and bombers before they can shoot. That's mostly why I decided to go looking how to fix it.
Also, I actually have been hit by missiles quite a lot. The AI doesn't seem to use them unless I've bombed him or something to make him mad but they do at least try to use them. I bet I could tweak the UnitAI and make them used better.

I would rather see the infantry beat a space ship in planet combat because in MoO2 you couldn't capture a city with just space ships. I think they would still be strong enough with a -1 though because they can be produced so cheaply.

As far as I know there are two dead end techs in the biology group that don't advance, but that's because they are just placeholders (actually I'll disable them because they don't need to be there). I haven't seen any other techs that don't go on to the next group yet but I'm sure they're out there. If you could tell me which techs they are I'll fix them.

Click to expand...

I guess that's a mid to late game thing, because I can't remember the AI attacking with Marine/Armor/Robo-Warriors (except when an invasion fleet is right next to a system of theirs).

I'll check for other dead end techs.

fulano said:

-Fix Armor and Batteloid building dependency again (it's still not right)

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you mean by this?

fulano said:

What if we changed the infantry <iMoves> to -3 so they can't move at all, even after being upgraded?

I tested it and it does work.

Click to expand...

Ok, that's cool then.

JEELEN said:

That's easy to check on the start up screen if you mouse over all the races. I hadn't noticed the 'telepathic option', but the Elerians' telepathy should give them an edge to all personel/manned ships, not just ground forces.

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In MoO2 Elarians could capture entire planets with one battleship with their mind control ability, making troop strengths meaningless. If an additional Elarian promotion was given to battleships with +100% vs troops it could simulate their ability to wipe out troops and capture stars with ease.

I am just sharing the idea though. I don't really want to mess with balancing the races. I'd rather leave that up to someone else.

JEELEN said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this?

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I was trying to make armor & battleoids require an armor barracks to be built like the marines needed the marine barracks. I didn't do it right the first some but it is now fixed in the next update I will post.

OK, cool.

Here's a preliminary list of dead end techs:

- Advanced Fusion (Bombers II)
- Advanced Engineering (Anti-Missile Rockets)
- Advanced Engineering (Reinforced Hull)
- Advanced Construction (Missile Base)
- Advanced Construction (Heavy Armor)
- Advanced Metallurgy (Tritanium Armor)
- Optronics (Optronic Computer)
- Optronics (Dauntless Guidance System)
- Astro Biology (BioSpheres), as mentioned
- Astro Engineering (Fighter Garrison), as mentioned
- Robotics (Robo-Miner Plant)
- Robotics (Battlestation)
- Advanced Chemistry (Merculite Missiles)

In a number of these cases there's one of the category that leads to another tech, but the other category techs don't.

Wow, apparently you've got a much better way of checking this than I do because I didn't see any of those! Thanks!

Well, I noticed it while playtesting, so I just started taking notes.

Additional dead end techs:

- Ion Fission (Ion Pulse Cannon)
- Ion Fission (Shield Capacitators)
- Servo Mechanics (Fast Missile Racks)
- Servo Mechanics (Advanced Damage Control))
- Advanced Biology (Death Spores), the other biology tech?
- Gravitic Fields (Anti-Grav Harness)
- Artificial Intelligence (Security Stations)
- Tachyon Physics (+1 sight "across water")*
- Neutrino Physics (+1 sight "across water")*
- Positronics (Positronic Computer)
- Positronics (University)

Again, in a number of these cases there's one of the category that leads to another tech, but the other category techs don't.

*I've been thinking about this: the "space" map is actually mostly land (with Nebula as "water" that land units can't enter) with mostly land units, so I reckon "+1 sight across water" doesn't really do much. It would translate to +1 visibility across Nebula squares; I'm not sure that's very useful...

JEELEN said:

Well, I noticed it while playtesting, so I just started taking notes.

Additional dead end techs:

- Ion Fission (Ion Pulse Cannon)
- Ion Fission (Shield Capacitators)
- Servo Mechanics (Fast Missile Racks)
- Servo Mechanics (Advanced Damage Control))
- Advanced Biology (Death Spores), the other biology tech?
- Gravitic Fields (Anti-Grav Harness)
- Artificial Intelligence (Security Stations)
- Tachyon Physics (+1 sight "across water")*
- Neutrino Physics (+1 sight "across water")*
- Positronics (Positronic Computer)
- Positronics (University)

Click to expand...

Okay, I went through the list and I only saw one techs that didn't lead to the next group but the rest seemed fine. I don't understand what needed fixed with them.

JEELEN said:

*I've been thinking about this: the "space" map is actually mostly land (with Nebula as "water" that land units can't enter) with mostly land units, so I reckon "+1 sight across water" doesn't really do much. It would translate to +1 visibility across Nebula squares; I'm not sure that's very useful...

Click to expand...

I did try to ask about that a while back but I didn't explain myself clearly. I've added the sensor upgrades to those techs so you gain a sight bonus promotion as well as extra sight across nebula... better than nothing?

I actually will post this latest batch of fixes in a new thread since I haven't done much with the tech tree for a while.

fulano said:

Okay, I went through the list and I only saw one techs that didn't lead to the next group but the rest seemed fine. I don't understand what needed fixed with them.

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Well, according to my research help (What tech shall we research now?) the mentioned techs don't have a link to next tech (if they actually do have that it doesn't show up).

fulano said:

I did try to ask about that a while back but I didn't explain myself clearly. I've added the sensor upgrades to those techs so you gain a sight bonus promotion as well as extra sight across nebula... better than nothing?

Click to expand...

Indeed - thx!

JEELEN said:

Well, according to my research help (What tech shall we research now?) the mentioned techs don't have a link to next tech (if they actually do have that it doesn't show up).

Click to expand...

I always use the Technology Adviser to choose what's next. What is the research help, is that the suggested tech to research next?

When you discover a tech, you get a pop up asking what to research next. But nevermind that, I noticed there are now 2 techs left that show up in the tech tree as not linked to a future tech:
- Advanced Fusion (Bomber II); there's no line to a future tech
- Planetoid Construction (nothing specified); there's no line to a future tech.

Everything else seems OK, except in the Civilopedia no Doom Star class ships seem to show up (nor are they shown as linked to any tech in the tech tree).