What Mods Did You Use?

And which ones do you want to return in GalCiv3?

from GalCiv3 Forums

Hello everyone! If you ask me, GalCiv2 is a contender for the greatest game of all time. I still play it regularly. As great as it is, mods make it even better.

 

So what about you? What mods did you use? Are there any that you are hoping will return, or will become a basic feature? Obviously, improved balance, texture, and weapon effects are pretty much going to be baseline in GalCiv3.  But there are other things as well. I always play with the Star Wars vs. Star Trek mod. Nothing beats watching a Sovereign class ship tear through a Imperial Cruiser.

 

I’m hoping that a GalCiv3 version of that mod returns. I’m also hoping we see ship models from contemporary sci-fi movies and games.

23,437 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Gaunathor's game overhauling mod; He did a great job making everything better, from the AI to the research.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting John, reply 2

I use 

Twilight: Tolmekian's TechTree Fix v3.51
 

https://forums.galciv2.com/405819/page/20/#3204457

 

 
End of John's quote

 

Same here.  This mod (and I assume others like it such as ones by MarvinKosh, Gaunathor, & Altarn) make Twilight of the Arnor feel like what it SHOULD have been out of the box.  I'd never play TA without it.

 

But I also combined it with Kryo's Hull mod.  Fantastic mod, and I hope that many of the features in this mod will be stock features in Galciv3.  Don't EVER design ships without this mod, or you will catch the gonorrhea.

 

There's also another one that I've got stuffed up in there that lets you use all the weapons, engines, modules, and junk like that as extras.  Neat & gives you more stuff to build with, but not as critical as the other two.

 

Plus I've made a few tweaks of my own.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I mostly use my own mods with just one exception.

Exception: Babylon 5 ships (from here somewhere), with my own hull mod.  Made the standard size hulls Aurora, Thunderbolt, Hyperion, Omega, Warlock.  And then fitted the White Star and Nova as specials with the tech right after medium hulls.  White Star is the same as a medium hull but with better base speed and sensor range.  It also costs more and makes a good survey ship.  The Novas are right in between medium and large as close as I can get it across the board.  Because of the way the modules scale it is just a bit stronger then a medium hull but with more hp.

 

Custom range mod.  Made hyper drive come with a -200% penalty and removed the support modules.  I would have gone with a larger penalty but you are fighting the internal range scaling too much and everything just gets more wonky from there.  It works ok but the AI doesn't handle it well and I had to bump the AI difficulty from what I normally play.

 

Custom tech mod.  Made a computer program that went through the tech tree XMLs and multiplied every tech cost it found by 20.  The game scales this internally as well and in practice the effect is about 15x-ish.  Had to adjust the cost of a few techs like hyper drive so that the races had them from the start of the game.

 

Custom anomaly mod.  Added %1 boost to various abilities not already covered and added another money mod because they were getting scarce with the other boosts.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting ParagonRenegade, reply 1

Gaunathor's game overhauling mod; He did a great job making everything better, from the AI to the research.
End of ParagonRenegade's quote

Thanks! I'm trying my best. For everyone interested, you can find Autumn Twilight here.

Just don't get too comfortable with the current version. I'm working on some major changes. If everything works out, you will need to remake your ships, because certain parts will no longer fit (or may no longer be available to you).

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Gaunathor, reply 5


Quoting ParagonRenegade, reply 1
Gaunathor's game overhauling mod; He did a great job making everything better, from the AI to the research.

Thanks! I'm trying my best. For everyone interested, you can find Autumn Twilight here.

Just don't get too comfortable with the current version. I'm working on some major changes. If everything works out, you will need to remake your ships, because certain parts will no longer fit (or may no longer be available to you).
End of Gaunathor's quote

 

Honestly, the mod is great already, and with the alpha and beta only a handful of months away is it really worth the effort?

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting ParagonRenegade, reply 6
Honestly, the mod is great already, and with the alpha and beta only a handful of months away is it really worth the effort?
End of ParagonRenegade's quote

There are still a few things I'm not entirely happy with, or that don't quite work as far as the AI is concerned. I really don't want to leave unfinished work behind.

Reply #8 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Gaunathor, reply 7
I really don't want to leave unfinished work behind.
End of Gaunathor's quote

You must be a young programmer. You obviously have not yet learned that there is always unfinished work to leave behind.

:blush: Yep. Been there, Battled that same brick wall, left frustrated. Many times.  x_x

Reply #9 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Gaunathor, reply 7


Quoting ParagonRenegade, reply 6Honestly, the mod is great already, and with the alpha and beta only a handful of months away is it really worth the effort?

There are still a few things I'm not entirely happy with, or that don't quite work as far as the AI is concerned. I really don't want to leave unfinished work behind.
End of Gaunathor's quote

 

Try and fix AI personalities for the Drengin, Yor and Korath then; I noticed in your mod they don't really expand that much beyond their influence borders, which gets them crushed. Just my 2 cents

Reply #10 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Lucky, reply 8
You must be a young programmer.
End of Lucky's quote

Actually, I'm not a programmer at all, but a (unemployed) assistant tax consultant. I just picked up how to edit XML-files, because I got annoyed by some bugs during the beta for TotA.

Quoting ParagonRenegade, reply 9
Try and fix AI personalities for the Drengin, Yor and Korath then; I noticed in your mod they don't really expand that much beyond their influence borders, which gets them crushed. Just my 2 cents
End of ParagonRenegade's quote

That's a flaw in their AI personality itself. It doesn't like to expand into areas with strong foreign influence. You can see the same behaviour in the vanilla game. I wish, I could fix that, but we modders don't have direct access to the AI code. Even if we did, I'm not sure, if I could fix it anyhow. Like I said, I'm not a programmer.

Still, there are ways to work around this problem. The first one is to make sure, that they have a good amount of habitable worlds within their starting sphere of influence, and that there are no other races starting too close to them.

The second one is something I'm addressing in my next version: range. I removed the Basic Life Support module, among other things, which means, that the starting range of all races is much more limited. That should provide the AIP 7 races a leg up during colonisation, because the other races can't out-expand them so easily now. That change works out quite well so far during my tests.