I've posted version 1.29. This uses Revolution 1.65 rather than Rev DCM. I made minor SDK changes to see if the AI won't settle other planets better, and have the capability now to mess around with this and other things in the SDK. Also, since this change, no more python exception popups (so far). Also made other minor changes, fixed Standard Oil, already fixed interplanetary trade, tweaked the yield of forest and allowed earlier but inferior use of plantation bonuses by farms.
EDIT: I'm up to version 1.33, which is interim (aren't they all), but now the AI clearly is colonizing planets and space as they are supposed to. This opens up vast new realms of stuff to work on, just lots of time consuming stuff that I know how to do. I've got pages and pages of notes of things to change and fix up.
Hard things that I need:
A way to make a building be automatically granted if a city is in certain terrain. I'm planning to have a huge space station looking thing blot out the whole cityscape for any city in space, or maybe even frame it to make it look like a cutaway into a cylindical space habitat. The coding part could probably be done in Python.
A way to limit civs and leaderheads to appearing only in certain eras. This will probably require some SDK, since it involves adding an XML tag and adding functionality to it, although it may be possible in Python to just allow wrong one to be made and then switch them but I see that being a really bad way to go.
Also, I have a modcomp (credits are coming, I have a text file on my desktop) that makes random city names, but I want to use it only for Barb cities or selected civs, not for all civs. Again, Python, probably just a couple of lines if I'm lucky. Whatever sets it in motion, just set it under an "if" and check for civ name.
I'm thinking of making a Space Marine unit that has like a jetpack. They bob as they float in space, like a helicopter or something, but otherwise use regular infantry type animations to shoot a laser (no recoil, but weaker) or rocket. Right now there's a stopgap unit in there.
Also I've put in a "Robot" unit that will become a "Self Assembling Prefabricated Improvment" Builds in space but cheaper and earlier than full "Workbot," except builds kill it. Current art is a stand in. What I want is something that kind of unfolds itself.
Orbit: making it water means it looks like water, and I haven't figured out how to reskin a third water terrain--graphically, civ recognizes only deep and shallow. You can add a third but it won't have a texture, so it will look like the underlying water effects. If you cover it with a feature, that feature must be impassable or the terrain is passable through the feature. If you make this feature impassable to non space units, the AI doesn't colonize planets. Thus for now it just looks wrong, because making it water is the best way to get the AI to colonize planets. I took an FFH icepack feature and made it black, but only use it to blacken the edge of planets and also speed movement and ban yields and improvements on planets edge (poles) to reflect more scrunched polar terrain (but prime real estate for one reason or another on all planets and thus settled first). I left in the ability to found cities there, but so far even this confines AI space colonization to space. Once an AI civ has one city on the edge of a planet it will go hogwild expanding into the "interior" but that first city is always there. It isn't because passengers are dropped off there, its because that's the plan. Also I had to sacrifice harbors, which I will replace with something.
Fixed the exception from trying to get units for new barb civs and made all the Terraforming buildings work (previously only the later ones did) though they may change function.