barrybeal

Join Date 04/2003

My collection of bug fixes and personnal preferences changes to Crusade

Starting with the early Crusade Bug Fix Mods, I created my own mod (modeling) of the GC3 Crusade Expansion XML data files to fix bugs and to model the game to my own preferences. Since that time this effort has taken a life of its own with major and subtle changes have made their way into my efforts. With the 2.13 and now Opt-in 2.14 Patch StarDock has made significant efforts to fix some of the problems with the initial Crusade Technology Tree and behind the scene's calculations of flat and percentage bonuses. I have attempted to look at the old values for buildings and how existing technologies interconnected and functioned prior to Crusade in order to bring some order and consistency to the current state of the values in the XML files. Most of this work involved tweaking values in three XML files - MasterTechDefs.XML, ImprovementDefs.XML and StarbaseModuleDefs.XML.

Note that a lot of the changes reflect the ongoing discussion of Crusade bugs at my Forum Post below and in some cases my own preferred solution to the issues. Mainly the intent of posting this is for other modder and/or Stardock to use this work to make the game better and solve the initial problems affecting the Crusade Launch. I will continue to make changes from this initial release of my mod but if it is broken Please remove my mod and let me know what problems you have. Hopefully I fix whatever mistakes that might still be included in what I am releasing.

https://forums.galciv3.com/482895/page/1/

So use this at your own risk and hopefully some of these changes will be incorporated into the base game over time.

Semi-complete quickly summary of the changes incorporated in the mod:

1) Incorporated most of the 2.14 Opt-in changes of 5/19 - see the change notes text file in the update ZIP for more details on changes from 2.14.

2) Incorporated most Horemvore's Blueprint changes from the preliminary Crusade update to his Galactic Star Trek Mod. Also incorporated his Technology tree research cost changes.

3) Revised the Manufacturing Tech tree arrangement and rebalanced the manufacturing bonus buildings and starbase modules for all races to be consistent. In keeping with the Crusade Philosophy, the new manufacturing bonus buildings have percentage bonuses that are about one quarter of what they were in previous versions of the game.

4) Revised the Research Tech tree arrangement and rebalanced the research bonus buildings and starbase modules for all races to be consistent. In keeping with the Crusade Philosophy, the new research bonus buildings have percentage bonuses that are about one third of what they were in previous versions of the game.

5) Beyond changes in the 2.14 tech tree layout, I have reacted separate branches in the technology tree for the following:

     A) new planetary special resource mining techs (two branches removing from manufacturing and terraforming tech trees)
     B ) Farming techs were separated from planetary tile terraforming techs
     C) Planetary tile terraforming techs were separated from planetary colonization terraforming techs
     D) Slave Pit techs remain as a separate research branch
     E) Hive buildings (planetary production bonus) have return from 2.0 as its own tech tree branch just like Slave Pits (Slavers), Molecular Fabricators (still Slavers not Paranoid for now), Social Matrix (Ancient)
     F) Power Matrix Manufacturing Bonus and Population Cap increasing buildings have returned for Synthetics (copied from 2.0)
     G) Spark of Life techs (Fast Assembly, High Capacity Assembly, Ultimate Assembly "Robot" Manufacturing projects) have returned from 2.0 for Synthetics as separate tech tree.
     H) Morale Buildings were split off Economic Buildings (was semi done that way in 2.14)
     I)   2.14 Patch already split off Trade techs, Governing Techs, Diplomacy and Cultural Influence Techs.  Tourism has returned I may change this some in future update.

6) Returned Empire Unique Planetary Resistance building EleriumDefenseShield (was mistakenly called Planetary Defense building before it was deleted in 2.13).

7) Returned the three Starbase Morale Modules.

8) Re-enabled the ability to build the Central Bank (Empire Unique) for all Races. Computer Core (Empire Unique) and Space Elevator (Colony Unique), Space Port (Colony Unique) buildings for were re-enabled for Slavers. Deep Core Mines (Colony Unique) building (+1 Social Manufacturing) was removed for Slavers.

9) Slaver manufacturing bonus buildings for now only increase Food Income by +1 instead of increasing Population Cap by +1. Molecular Fabricators that had percentage food bonuses now increase food by +1 as well.

10) Several Devout (Krynn) techs were fixed (Shadow Temple and Shadow Trade) were fixed.

11) BlackMarket (+25% Gross Income) was enabled for Unrelenting races not Slavers.

12) Knowledge Ability races get Hive buildings not Time Travelers.

13) Time Travelers get Gravitronic Techs and Dimensional Phasing Techs (not Knowledgeable Races)

14) Some Racial Abilities were adjusted so that the negative bonuses were cut in half to match decreases in positive bonuses.

15) Precursor World Manufacturing bonuses were lowered as reported in bug reports previously but the bonuses do increase slightly with Precursor World Research.

16) Leveling bonuses have generally be increased by factor of 2.5X for normal manufacturing and research buildings or 5X for economy buildings.

17) Manufacturing initiate and neighboring bonuses affect MaxManufacturing now instead of Manufacturing.

There are lots of things I have not yet looked at and I had hoped to finish a review of Economic, Trade, Cultural, Diplomacy, Government buildings and stuff given to other races but with over 30 technologies removed with 2.14 patch I did get there before the weekend. So I am releasing what I have done "AS IS"s for now with more changes to follow (yes initially this post is just notes till I get a chance tonight to run the mod a few times after my last minute changes today).

Remember this Mod is essentially untested to get it out there for comments

[ Removed the download link for version 1.2 of my Mod]

Okay I found an interesting way to disappear a tech in a non-obvious way - I wondered why Interstellar Tourism wasn't displaying - did have too many branches now lol. Interesting bug in the Game Parser.

<Preclusions>
      <RaceTrait>

      </RaceTrait>
    </Preclusions>

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barrybeal

Join Date 04/2003

I have spent some time this morning playing my favorite custom Snathi race (have to be Slavers and Scavengers now lol) something I haven't done for almost two weeks. I have found a few bugs (disappearing Standard morale techs, factory and work camp bonuses should be 2.5% not 5%) so I will release an slightly updated version of my mod tonight.

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barrybeal

Join Date 04/2003

I have revisited whether the Slaver Manufacturing Bonus Buildings Work Camp should increase Population or Food. And I have decided that it is simpler to ignore Crusade's requirement that you have to add a city to normally go beyond a planet's standard 4 Population Cap (+4 Food From the Colony Capital) (you can have more than 4 food therefore population cap due to special resources on the planet or planet bonuses to food like being a Bread Basket without adding a City). Work Camps now give +1 Population per building but the adjacency (leveling) bonus to population has been removed. I have returned the planetary Food Income bonuses to Slave Pits and to Molecular Fabricators in lieu of +1 Population Bonuses (Molecular Fabricators had its +1 PopulationCap bonus removed in 2.13) and also I have added +0.x % FoodIncome leveling adjacency bonuses to those buildings but removed the Population Neighboring Bonus from Molecular Fabricators (always bothered me that it was different).

You will notice that I have fixed many inconsistencies in research cost and bonus values (and it some cases also including different prerequisite techs although later has been partially fixed in 2.14) between the buildings of various races that were never compared when the changes for Crusade were implemented and I have fixed some of the Crusade changes that seem partially completed and in some cases returning to how things worked before Crusade.

I have started a review of the Manufacturing costs after finding a few consistencies for 2.14 research buildings and it seems that some of the building manufacturing costs were significantly decreased for Crusade but others remained the same as before.

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barrybeal

Join Date 04/2003

I missed this Steam Post by Draginol. Even though Hives haven't made it into 2.14 yet, it is heartening that someone at Stardock is thinking about how Crusade needs to be fixed while it currently seems rushed to release without polish or QC.

I will add a link to 1.21 version of my mod once I wake up enough to do a quick comparison of manufacturing costs of various similar buildings.

I went back to before Crusade and adjusted the building manufacturing costs for Manufacturing, Research, Ambitious (Aquatic - Torian) Farming buildings, and most of the Morale buildings for all races to be approximately where they were in 2.0. Generally lowering the associated building cost which also helps game play with the lower manufacturing building bonuses in Crusade. I also went and increased the Credits you get from Junk Anomaly's (really 1 credit when every starbase money costs 100 or more). The three level of credit bonuses are higher and all give a variable amount.

DropBox Link to Download version 1.21 of my Mod

Draginol [developer] May 7 @ 12:22am

Originally posted by Astasia:

Originally posted by Draginol:
The Thalan now have the Time Traveler's trait which gives them access to a slew of unique techs and a different play style.

No, they don't.

Time Traveler unlocks 3 "generic" higher tier techs, one of them is a higher tier engine which can't realistically be built in the early game, the other is a basic +4 administrators tech, and I don't remember the third, medium hulls or something. That's it. The other trait unlocks the Gravitronic line which is 4 small capacity boosts and that is it. There is nothing that Thalan's currently get that is unique or different from the Terrans.

You are incorrect.

Gravitonic Manopulation
Gravitonic Mastery
Dimensional Weapons
Beam Shifting
Missile Shifting
Kinetic Shifting
Dimensional Phasing
Shield Phasing
Phased Point Defenses
Phased Armor

In next wee's update they also get:
Hives
Helpful Hives
Productive Hives
Gaia Theory
Mother Hives

(Thalan have Intuitive which has intuitive which also has the above techs)

Those are, btw, the unique techs the Thalan got. The only difference was that there was more flavor text naming differences but they were the same tech.

Moreover, NOW, The Thalan start out with the ability to build large scale ships and other tech.

But here's the thing:
If someone has something they want, I'm happy to put it in. But really, once someone wrecks the Steam review score (which, btw, kills the game because it makes it invisible on Steam's recommended) I lose most of my interest in going out of my way for them.

If someone wants a feature or change, we can do it. We're here. Posting. You're not going to see the devs from most games on the forums on a Saturday. But we are because we're passionate about this. But like I said, once someone chooses to vote to destroy the game's marketability, it's really difficult to justify caring what that person wants.

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Sorry, i can't find your link to the 1.21 version...

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barrybeal

Join Date 04/2003

Fixed but also included fix for Molecular Fabricators - should get leveling bonuses Based on MaxManufacturing and Research not Manufacturing and MaxManufacturing.

<ImprovementType>MaxManufacturing</ImprovementType>

<SecondaryType>Research</SecondaryType>

- Increased the Adjacency Leveling Bonuses for Population Growth (Hospital) buildings from 0.01 to 0.05 (5%) per level.

I also think Starbase defense attack values should revert bad to the old values - yes they are harder to destroy but eventually two or three large ships with prototype weapons and good defenses can take them out without lose. Just can't do that right away.

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I have found in the crusade files, the following icons: Settlement.png, City.png, Metropolis.png.

So i have modded your mod to add four upgradables City that goes like this:

Settlement -> Town -> City -> Metropolis that give 4/8/16/32 Pop capacity.

Maybe that is something that would you consider to add.

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barrybeal

Join Date 04/2003

Cool PM me a download link to your changes and I will look at them - yes changing City to +16 Pop Cap from 8 is abit drastic. Should probably do the same for Silicone Cities. It actually was easier to get food than I thought when I was playing last night (I did get the Food Wonder and put it on a +3 Population/+1 Population boost tile). Continuing to find some more things to tweak like Embassies costing 500 manufacturing cost (I did lower and scale the influence bonus too). I did change Molecular Fabrications to be a Paranoid Ability building along with Scavenger Ability since Iconians originally had that building. Add Social Matrix buildings to Scavengers (Snathi) as well.

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barrybeal

Join Date 04/2003

Updated per the 5/22 update to the 2.14 Opt-in Patch

Several Fixes to my mod version 1.21 as noted above plus Frank999's upgradable Settlement/Town/City/Metropolis additions for Standard races and another set for Silicone Based Life.

I did change the Starbase Defense System Modules and their upgades Advanced Starbase Defense Systems and Omega Starbase Defense System Modules back to their previous attack values. Weapon and Defense upgrade modules have had their attack / defense values increased. You never know I might change Starbase hitpoints and other Ship stats in ShipHullStatDefs.XML around for my own use.

Note there is inconsistency about how the increased manufacturing costs are implemented for various race's manufacturing, research, farming, and morale buildings. I am not going to resolve it till I see where things end up. They apparently do plan on Research Laboratory now called Data Center to be a Empire Unique +10% research bonus building but that misaligns the other race's (Slaver, Synthetic, and Ambitious) research buildings as they never originally had a upgrade to the Discovery sphere. Certainly can change things that way but really a single 10% research building that you exclude from Slavers in lieu of a what 2.5% (since we running about 1/3 of the 2.0 bonus values) non-unique research building that you can build on any planet cheaply is interesting trade. Of course when you get to XenoResearch tech you can just start with a 5% research bonus building (currently a lot more expensive) that don't upgrade from Research Laboratory. But these kind of design changes without explanation makes me how thought out these changes have been.

I did generally increase the late game tech costs and late game building manufacturing costs per the latest changes (5/22) - like most things these are not 100% consistent.

- General increase in late game tech costs.

Prior to the getting and reviewing the 5/22 Opt-In update, I did lower the manufacturing costs associated with Cultural influence buildings. Also I lowered the manufacturing costs associated with the special buildings enabled by Ideological Choices.

Will add download link when I figure out what is crashing the Game from generating Galaxies now - could be other mods I currently am also loading. From what I can tell no techs were deleted in the 5/22 update. I did get my mod with its 2.14 Patch Opt-in Changes from 5/22 to run now (game crashes if you have mods stacked inside each other by mistake - different setup on desktop from laptop I was playing on). But I going to see about experimenting with new changes and a couple other things before releasing this update tomorrow.

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Just a follow up on my Settlement -> Town -> City -> Metropolis idea:

I find that i need less food than before because i use mostly settlement or town at first.

I think we should roll back the food/pop ratio to what it was before the opt-in-2.13 :

So Settlement -> Town -> City -> Metropolis would use 1/2/4/8 food.

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barrybeal

Join Date 04/2003

I reviewed the changes Saison made to PlanetFeatureDef.XML and returned the Tourism bonuses but left changing Manufacturing to MaxManufacturing bonuses. I have added the Aquatic Life Support modules (revised the tech references since most Aquatic/Torian techs were techs were deleted in 2.14) that Saison had in ShipComponentDefs.XML to the new revised 2.14 Opt-in XML file.

I have also gone back and did more extensive review of the Tech Research Costs and Building Manufacturing Cost changes in the 5/22 patch and adjusted especially the early and mid game changes that were included in that Opt-In Patch. Only thing changed in 5/23 patch was lowering some of the late game Research techs. I lowered mine but they are still alittle higher than 2.14.

I have created a new Data Center building - Colony Unique +10% research building available with Colonization tech. Research Laboratory returns as itself and is enabled by ResourceExploitationTech. It is possible that Data Center should only exist for Intuitive Races but implemented wrong.

I have not moved XenoFarms to Planetology - seems like "Squeaky wheel" way to address planets reaching their population cap very early now and needing to add Cities to grow.

Let me know if you have any problems with this update.

DropBox Link to download version 1.22 of My Mod

Note as Horemvore has suggested I changed the cities to progress from +2 Population (16 cost) Settlements to +4 (32 cost) Towns to +8 (64 cost) Cities to +16 Metropolis (128 cost) but I had already Zipped the old version of ImprovementDefs.XML. Note that Stardock is now calling today's update to the Opt-in Patch version 2.2 and the executable now runs as of today as version 2.2

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barrybeal

Join Date 04/2003

Played around with how much food you need per population for Cities - currently Crusade 2.2 has 16 Population Cap increase for 2 food so I have adjusted for that but I am thinking you might need more than 2 food for 16 PopulationCap Increase.

Removed the requirement for the Starbase Laboratory Module to need 4 Promethion metals to build. Still needs 1 Thulium.

Fixed the reported Problem for the Hyperion Buildings needing HeliosOreCost not HelioOreIncome. Fixed as reported - added a +2 Military Neighboring effect to Strategic Command building.

Testing - Re-enabling the Economic Buildings for the Synthetics (Yor) - Market, Shooping Center, Colonial Bank, Financial Sectors, and Galactic Stock Exchange as well as Financial Capital. These techs were in the original Yor Tech tree.

With Power Matrix buildings, Synthetics do pretty good now - just use only one robot per colony ship till you ramp up the product on the Homeworld - need high population there to maximize production of Robots as soon as possible after all the buildings including Shipyard have been built. Early Colonization is only to hold territory to expand into later.

DropBox Link to download version 1.23 of My Mod

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barrybeal

Join Date 04/2003

With Horemvore removing his Star Trek Crusade Mod from this form post

https://forums.galciv3.com/476955/page/1/#replies

I have gone back to updating my MOD to run under GC3 Crusade 2.61/2.70 but for the moment to get more used to Brad's massive changes he keeps making with Crusade Patches I am just changing the last version of Horemvore's MOD with my list of preferred changes (which I won't release as it is not my mod to patch). Someday I may release a "large galaxy" version of my mod with some of my changes to Manufacturing/Research bonuses and revised Tech Tree plus increases to Ship/Starbase/Shipyard HP and weapon damage to come somewhere closer to what GC3 was before Crusade. Certainly prior to Crusade there was some issues with massive manufacturing/research bonuses a player could obtain which the AI was not really able to match without massive difficulty level bonuses.

Currently, Crusade has its manufacturing/research building bonuses cut by a factor of 3 or 4 with similar reductions of HPs and weapon damage over what GC3 offered prior to Crusade. Certainly making it easier to play smaller galaxies and shorter games or in other words to have a TALL Empire than it was to play a traditional wide large galaxy game. There has also been a shift to production by population (making Cities more important) rather than by building bonus improvements or Starbase modules.

While looking at making changes to Horemvore MOD, I have been intrigued by FRANK999 new Population Mod

https://forums.galciv3.com/485983/page/1/#3695937

Several much needed changes were included by FRANK999

1) Tweaks to Mercenaries in keeping with Crusade changes to Population and Ship HPs and Weapon Damage.

2) Adding Garrisons to Colony and Civilization Capitals to make them better defended (new Legions not from Generals are currently extremely expensive at game start making taking most enemy planets except Homeworlds trivially easy currently)

3) Farming changes especially improvement to the Farming Bonus Techs

Beyond going back to include my changes to the Tech Tree Layout and add missing buildings, there are several issues that still persists with the current version of Crusade:

A) Colony and Civilization Capitals are missing Military, Tourism, and Approval Neighboring bonuses. Same goes for Town/City/Metropolis buildings.

Adding Neighboring bonuses to some of the Unique Buildings

C) Review the Indestructive and Colony / Empire Unique traits for various improvements and removing those that don't make sense or match my preferences.

D) Review the correlation between Population and Production - change the exponent in GalCiv3GlobalDefs.XML from 1.0 to 0.X ?

E) Revisit giving more starting Administrators at higher Map SIzes ?

F) Manufacturing costs for RecuitCitizens, TrainLegions, etc need to be lowered.

G) Tweaks to Slaver (Zealout) races - revisit Work Farms, Research Chamber, and Slave Pit building bonuses

H) Tweaks to Aquatic (Torian) races

I) Tweaks to Certain Ability (Alarian) races

J) Tweaks to Devout Ability (Krynn) Races

K) Tweaks to Scavenger (Snathi) Races

L) Tweaks to Paranoid Ability Races - should they have Molecular Fabrication tech which used to belong to Alarians or is the extra Fighters enough ?

M) Revisiting Synthetic Races - Adding Power Matrix buildings removed in Crusade- should they have Economic Buildings (instead of relying on population as their own means of making money)

N) Tweaks to Silicone Bases races - adding missing Town and Metropolis buildings - should they get Mining bonus where they get no farms - added in AbilityDefs.XML or scale via Tech.

O) Revisiting Research and Manufacturing Costs - seeing if disparities between races still exist and lowering of the cost of research for Tech progression or manufacturing for improvements.

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