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[MOD] Insane-Abundant Balance Mod

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[MOD] Insane-Abundant Balance Mod

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Insane Abundant Balance Mod

 

A mod designed around balancing the game for large maps with many planets.

 

 

Features:

 

* Massive AI work, to make the AI more competitive even on normal difficulty.

* Replaces Large Empire Penalty with stacking maintenance costs.

* Reworks the balance between 'wide' and 'tall' empires to make planet-grabbing less important, smaller empires more capable of competing with large ones.

* Fixes sensor stacking and engine stacking.

* Includes dozens of bug fixes

* Trade and Tourism more valuable

* Diplomacy less exploitable

* Ship blueprints improved

 

 

Install Instructions:

 

Just extract the .zip file to your My documents\my games\galcvi3\mods folder, then start the game. Activate mods by going into the Options meun, selecting the Gameplay tab, and turning on the 'Enable Mods' checkbox, then restart your game. To check it's working, just start a new game. If the minor races are listed as playable factions, then the mod is working.

 

Current Version:

 

1.7.1 for GC3 1.7

 

Latest version download link available at:

 

http://www.nexusmods.com/galacticcivilizations3/mods/13/?

1,236,240 views 735 replies +3 Loading…
Reply #301 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

:D :D :D .  This is great. 

I'm only on turn 90-ish or though.  I'll eventually get to the deficits that you're running.... 

I would be at those numbers if it wasn't for Krynn tech and lots of marketplace worlds.  Currently I have no warships for maintenance.

But I will get there eventually.... 

Reply #302 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Clearly the key to winning with Naselus's mod is to sell the Gal Civ III equivalent of junk bonds to the AI for debt financing.  

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #303 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Naselus,

I mentioned imposing a cost for military production. Perhaps this could be done by the same means you use to reduce production based on Approval?

Reply #304 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting ronnie76, reply 293

Damn you and your hyper fast updates. |-)

Time to start over.
 

End of ronnie76's quote

 

I'll probably be concentrating on bug fixes for the moment, so might slow down to a 2-week cycle to give people more chance to give feedback.

 

Quoting marigoldran, reply 296

Oh yeah, one of the reasons the Reapers were so powerful in my game is because the modder custom designed speed 18 default colony ships for them.  

This makes a big difference.  

I think changing the default colony ship design for the AI will make a big difference in eventual AI power.  
End of marigoldran's quote

 

I've already significantly changed their colony ship designs. They need sensors and stuff too, though, since on Normal it can't just see everything in the universe on day 1.

 

Quoting Annekynn, reply 298

Universal Soil Adaptation is still called Universal Soil Adapter_Name and it now cannot be built anywhere, period.
End of Annekynn's quote

 

Hmm, it should be available on any tile with >60% land mass. Might switch it to 1-per-colony and 0% land requirement, since they'll unlock later terraforming techs to get the rest anyway.

 

Quoting John, reply 300

A paltry -700 .. I am at -3400+ per turn and the dang budget folks want me to cut back on the fleet ... never.  fortunately I had just done the 3 ships per system and then sold them all off so an over 140k in funds.

Minor issue that has occurred for beam weapons ... they have 0 mass effectively after all the reductions got for them (at plasma).  I mean on a tiny ship I can get a heck of a kick.  Outside of the main game this be the only mod using that impacts mass, I think.  Can not say if this be the culprit but hey who needs dreadnaughts when can get over 1000 attack on tiny ships

 

Just noting this to see if any one else has similar wonder turn up.  This was on 1.2, gonna go to 1.2.2 and start a new game as current keeps hanging when eject ships from stations half the time.

 
End of John's quote

 

Yeah, I have a list of stuff which is currently getting miniaturized too much. I'll be doing a pass to eliminate anything which is getting -100% of anything for the next release I think; miniaturization in general is going to be getting a visit from the nerf bat soon anyway, since it's still a bit of a no brainer.

 

 

Quoting Wer900, reply 303

Naselus,

I mentioned imposing a cost for military production. Perhaps this could be done by the same means you use to reduce production based on Approval?
End of Wer900's quote

 

I'm afraid not; the Approval-Produciton relationship is defined in a special table in GlobalDefs, and we can't add an equivalent table for linking other stats. I'm not really sure a cost-per-% effect is really something we can implement directly, though increases to maintenance costs will do so indirectly (for example, being able to spend 100% on mil manu doesn't mean you can actually afford to support the ships that you build - especially when medium hulls can cost 20 cash per turn each and bigger than that even more).

Reply #305 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

One thing ive noticed, no one ever wars with anyone. 466 turns into a gifted map and everyone is alive and well and trading with one another. Peace for everyone!

Reply #306 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

None of the Hyperion buildings work any more either. My homeworld which has all of them doesnt reduce logistics, or boost health, or boost range, all of which worked in vanilla.

Reply #307 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Annekynn, reply 305

One thing ive noticed, no one ever wars with anyone. 466 turns into a gifted map and everyone is alive and well and trading with one another. Peace for everyone!
End of Annekynn's quote

 

This appears to be a vanilla bug added in 1.2

Reply #308 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Annekynn, reply 306

None of the Hyperion buildings work any more either. My homeworld which has all of them doesnt reduce logistics, or boost health, or boost range, all of which worked in vanilla.
End of Annekynn's quote

 

They work. They've been changed to work faction wide.

Reply #309 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I'm wondering if the developers should just totally get rid of the "war" concept and instead change the game title to: "Galactic Economics III."  

I wouldn't mind.  

Reply #310 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting marigoldran, reply 309

I'm wondering if the developers should just totally get rid of the "war" concept and instead change the game title to: "Galactic Economics III."  

I wouldn't mind.  
End of marigoldran's quote

I only play the game so i can blow stuff up.

Reply #311 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Sneak peak at 1.2.3 changelog:

 

1.2.3 changelog:

* Halved all mass reduction bonuses from tech.
* Universal Soil Adaptation now works on any tile, is one per colony, can be built again
* Doubled the slowdown effect of big hulls - you now need 5 times as many engines on a huge ship to get the same speed as a tiny hull.
* Hulls now progress 25, 50, 75, 125, 200 (changed from 25, 50, 75, 100, 250).
* Added more drives to the AI's ship designs.
* Logistics values on hulls now match their mass cap, so lots of small ships have equal logistics value to one huge hull.
* Dominant Strategy AI tech weights made much heavier.
* Life support maintenance switched from multiplier to flat. Multiplier was too punishing.
* Mass Cap increases reduced to 10%/tech.
* Increased AI's willingness to go to war.
* Fixed Universal Soil Adapter localization

End of quote

 

I'm holding off until Friday with this one. First, I'm hoping SD will put out the 1.2.1 patch. Second, I'm hoping I can include some more refinements to the AI tech strategies. And third, I'm in the middle of a plythrough at the moment and want to see the results. It's pretty promising right now.

Reply #312 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Thank you for the life support change.

Reply #313 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

So im not sure what can be done about this. 615 turns into a Gifted map. Here is an Orange fleet entering my space, made up of 4 huge ships. They have the moves, they have the hitpoints, but theyre almost naked when it comes to weapons and defense.

 

Reply #314 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Can you upload the save?

Reply #316 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Updated to 1.2.3 for 1.2.1:

 

1.2.3 changelog:

* Halved all mass reduction bonuses from tech.
* Universal Soil Adaptation now works on any tile, is one per colony, can be built again
* Dominant Strategy AI tech weights made much heavier.
* Life support maintenance switched from multiplier to flat. Multiplier was too punishing.
* Mass Cap increases reduced to 10%/tech.
* Increased AI's willingness to go to war.
* Fixed Universal Soil Adapter localization
* Completely reworked ship design:
* Hulls now progress 25, 50, 75, 110, 160 (changed from 25, 50, 75, 100, 250).
* All module masses now completely standardized over all tiers, so a buff module always masses 15, a sublight drive always masses 1 etc
* Assault fighters now have beams, drones have missiles and gaurdians have kinetics. There's no difference between them in DPS terms, and all carrier modules now cost the same.
* Logistics values on hulls now match their mass cap, so one huge hull has about the same logistics value and mass cap as 5 small hulls.
* Reworked hull size slowdown effect so tiny hulls now go at 150% of engine speed, small hulls at 100%, medium at 75%, large at 40% and huge at 30%
* ALL blueprints upgraded to work with the new mass values and actually planned out.
* Removed resource cost from carriers
* Starbase defense modules changed to balance DPS between them properly; generally improved.

End of quote

 

 

Ended up doing an awful lot of ship re-balance work, and not a great deal of AI tech stuff. I'll look into improving the weights on the 'best' techs for the next release, I think.

Note that pretty much all old custom ship blueprints are now obsolete with this version; they were already somewhat out from vanilla, but now will be wildly different and may end up crippled. Also note that few ships can now ever travel more than about 15 space without leaving themselves militarily weak. The blueprints included are pretty much how I'd design a ship for use under these rules at the moment, but I've not play tested them much yet so it might need further adjustment down the line. Feedback would be appreciated.

 

Oh, and you'll probably find that ships need around 50% engines to be reasonably fast now. That's deliberate. Rapid power projection is massively overpowered in GC3, because it also determines the number of attacks you get per turn. If you want to get 15+ moves, then you need to start removing armaments. Ideally, I don't really want to see anything that travels faster than about 25 being much use for, well, anything much.

Reply #317 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Annekynn, reply 315

Here ya go: http://nova.xzibition.com/~nexworks2/game3.zip


 

End of Annekynn's quote

 

Thanks for this - looking through it is what largely led me to doing the complete ship re-balance for 1.2.3. Hopefully the AI should produce somewhat more competitive ships now - partially because mass is much more constrained, and partially because I sat down and worked out exactly what would fit on every blueprint.

 

 

Reply #318 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

"Rapid power projection is massively overpowered in GC3, because it also determines the number of attacks you get per turn."

And the AI seems to stop doing anything with a fleet once its carried out just 1 attack even though its got plenty of moves left. The player on the other hand with a fleet that repairs itself can decimate multiple AI fleets in one turn. Really hope Stardock fixes this to either use up all your moves once youve carried out an attack, or teach the AI how to keep going.

And thank you for the hard work in the latest update!

Reply #319 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Any plans to update for the 1.3 opt-in or will you wait for the final release first?

Reply #320 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I always wait for the final release.

Reply #321 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Not been doing much modding this weekend; the whole wheel debacle has somewhat gotten in the way. I'm aiming for a release next week, probably to reconcile the 1.3 changes when they go live. Not much in the way of extra goodies just yet (was thinking of changing up anomalies a bit, including giving out some ideology from them, and reducing the chance of colonization events).

Reply #322 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Great mod, really enjoying it so far. First game I got caught with the AI refusing to go to war bug (was the previous version). Downloaded and installed your latest version and have a 300+ turn game going right now. AI is much more aggressive, and several skirmishes have broken out. AI has many fleets and fairly well built.

 

Have encountered a bit of a bug though. My colonies seem to get stuck in the N/A projects now, ie Economic stimulus. I cant seem to cancel them. I think it was around the time I upgraded to colony mayors (i'm running 1.2 btw). The option is simply greyed out. I can start and cancel any projects, just not those (culture festival and research project also cannot be cancelled, but i can switch to any of those 3).

 

I have 50+ planets so far and checking them manually for projects is going to be a pain. Any thoughts?

Reply #323 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Interesting one. I'll take look tonight.

Reply #324 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Hmmm, it's nothing obvious. Can anyone else confirm the problem?

Reply #325 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Damn, I wonder what it is. I'm not running any other mods other than yours. Version 1.2 of the game and your latest update files.

 

Want me to send you a save game? Some of the colonies experiencing this problem now no longer auto upgrade while the stimulus or N/A project is in effect, others do. The main issue is that I don't get notified when the finish other projects.