I don't think the AI takes advantage of terraforming properly. In your mod it's pretty critical, and as near as I can tell 300+ turns into a game and none of the AI powers are really doing it, or if they are they are doing it on a much smaller scale than I am. Most of my planets are class 25-40 and the AI's are still 5-20. I don't think its a matter of research, just queing the project.

Quoting Syntax_VI, reply 451

fair warning that godlike is pretty ridiculous The level below that (i think its incredible) generally feels about even for where I'm at. OFC all of this depends on start locations etc. I usually set multiple difficulties in game, so several incredible, many gifted, some genius, and maybe one or two godlike if I'm feeling adventurous.

End of Syntax_VI's quote

Agree ... all AI at Genius was great fun early to mid-game but a touch easy late game, I'm playing Incredible now and not sure if I can win.  That said, Genius could be ideal once 1.4 hits i.e. a good challenge without feeling like the AI benefits are immersion breaking (particularly the free credits, free technology, free ideology referenced in GalCiv3AIDefs.xml and no FOW).

Also agree, not sure what the root cause is, but this is definitely the main reason I've pulled away so quickly from the AI late game, Naselus I would encourage a closer look here.

SD  may have changed something on the terraforming side. It always built those first previously. Either that, or it's not grabbing the techs.

in current game playing noted that AI was t'forming at start but stopped as game progressed.  same with colonizing .. big push up front and then stops or only does 1-2 new o my 10-20.  overall does fall behind in mid to late game but initially does it which might be a problem as  instead of blding production research does terraforming if able.  Oh well back to playing

I'll restart with a mix of incredible and the one below it.  One other thing I think might need to be changed.  The optimization techs almost always offer us a choice of +% increase in stat, -% reduction in mass or -% reduction in cost.  Well cost is probably the most useless as once you get your wealth/industry planets up and running it doesn't matter.  In vanilla size reduction might have been a decent choice (barely) but in the mod it isn't worth it now.  This is especially true for engines.  A 10% reduction in mass is just one mass.  So +% stat increase is the only thing that makes sense.

In addition to this I only trade for mass reduction techs.  This way I will have my stat increase and the mass reduction.  I don't think the AI does this at all.  But this most likely needs a complete rebalancing in the base game.

When it comes to terraforrming I think the AI isn't researching those techs.  For the ones they have researched they do terraform.  It's just that this is so powerful right now and the AI probably doesn't realize it.  Maybe give those techs a bump for research as we approach the end of the colonization period.

I'm going to reduce resources even more for the next game.  Even at half of your base I had some resources over 200+ without even trying.  But before I do is there a reason why you have them so high?  Does this help the AI in some way?

I know you did a rebalancing of carriers but even now they are way too strong.  On a large hull I can fit two of the expanded carrier pods for 6 fighters.  I had a single fleet with 8 of these ships plus one ship that contained sensors and some jamming.  Against even tech level ships, even some with hugh hulls, the carriers won everytime without taking any damage.  Seems the best thing to do is not build them unless the AI does.

One last point/question.  I know you changed the maintenance costs to be colony only.  There are still techs that the AI picks to reduce social maintenance costs.  Aren't these wasted techs?  And with all the big terraforming I can pack a planet with 20-30 industry or research and not have to worry about costs.  Combine this with the AI not terraforming at the same level means the player greatly benefits over the AI.

In case I haven't said it lately thanks for the mod.  You did a great job.  I'm only trying to offer constructive criticism for future improvements.

I dunno, costs scale a lot now. They're more use than they were. And while engines are only 10 space each, if you've got 5 or 6 then that's an extra gun.

Yes, the AI doesn't appear to trade techs very much. I'm hoping 1.4 might have some changes there.

It's not quite so easy as that; I have 6 weights which can be tweaked. This makes it very hard to tell it 'research this at this point'.

I'm hoping to put back in the resource costs for many things later (at an earlier stage, hulls used durantium). Presently, the AI ignores these costs and can get massively minus resource quantities.

There's been further rebalancing in my 1.3.5 release candidate - namely, carrier modules have been reduced in size a little but now only carry 1 fighter each.

The techs reduce colonial maintenance now rather than improvement-specific maintenance, so they're not as useless as they appear. I've just not updated the tooltips. I do need to do a massive update of all the text in the mod; been kind of putting it off because, well, text updating is boring and mechanics updating is fun. I'll press-gang my gf into it at some stage.

I don't have the data in front of me so pardon if my numbers are off.  If the percentage reduction in mass is equal to the percentage increase in a stat then the mass reduction is the better way to go.  But I noticed that is not the case for most optimizations.  Usually it is 15% stat increase vs. a 10% mass reduction.  Using an engine of 10 mass and 10 base speed the BE formula is as follows:  10X = (x-1) * 11.5 which means 7.667.  Or if I had 8 engines doing 10 speed = 80 speed.  The mass cost is 8 * (10 * .9) = 72 total mass.

For the engine side I have 7 engines doing 11.5 speed (10 * 1.15) = 80.5 speed and a mass cost of 70.  So I have .5 more speed and 2 less mass.  At 10 engines the mass reduction is 10 for 100 speed while the speed increase has the same mass reduction but 103.5 speed.  Anything above 7.667 completely favors the stat increase while less engines is more favorable for mass reductions.

So the rules are that as long as mass cost doesn't increase with new techs you always pick mass reductions if the percentage reduction is equal to the stat increase.  Anything above a 1 to 1 is subject to how many of those items you actually want to have on a ship with 1 to 1.5 being 7 items.  This really comes into play as we hit huge size hulls.

Cost reductions are tied to how many ships you actually want or need but the same formula as above can be applied.  That said wealth is not an issue come mid game so I can always rush build if necessary and even if a ship is 15% cheaper I would rather have more things on a ship than more ships as other factors like logistics come into play.

Quick question in regards to starbase carrier modules. I got one, then upgraded it once to asault (on the starbase). I then gifted it to the AI and attacked it as I wanted to see how powerful it was and there were no fighters in the battle.

Bug, or did I screw it up by gifting the base to the AI? Do I have to manually build the fighters and send them to the starbase?

Probably a bug, but if it is it's one from vanilla. I've not mucked about with SB carrier modules.

Hmm, weird. I'll see if I can get the AI to attack a starbase with a carrier module and see what happens, perhaps its because I gifted it to them.

RE the defenses being homogenized in size, i get that they kind of are already (at least in weight to ratio), but pretty please don't make them all the same mass I just realized, I've been playing all these custom factions and making blueprints for the AI to use when they use the faction, and I'm guessing that change would basically nullify all the blueprints. Further, if I'm not mistaken, the AI would probably continue to build the now drastically less effective blueprints, wouldn't they?

I notice that if I play a faction, then start a new game, with the previously played faction as an AI that they often use the ships I built in the previous game.

Also, I'm in mid to late game, and was just having a glance at the default blueprints for the Terrans, and saw a Huge carrier with 31 moves, and a Large carrier with 23 moves. I'm only about to research Hyperwarp Mastery (so still a few techs away from the end). I know you mentioned that you wanted capital / warships to be hard pressed to be faster than 15 moves per turn (which I 100% support!!). At least, I'm pretty sure I read that.

31 moves makes conventional border perimeters and sensors pretty useless. I'm guessing it may have to do with the fact that carriers (as the AI builds them) don't really need any defenses / offenses and can just make due with the carrier modules and engines + life support.

Edit - Huge battleships have aprox 25 moves, and Large battleships aprox 23 moves. Still pretty fast, and these are the default blueprint ships I can build with Terran tech, 2-3 techs away from the finish, so I imagine they will get faster. I'll research the last few techs and give you an idea as to how fast ships move in the end game.

Yeah - End game propulsion techs allow for Huge carriers to move 40 spaces, Large carriers to move 31 and Huge battleships to move 34 spaces, default terran blueprints.

I love those speed numbers.  The biggest issue I had with GalCiv2 was the AI ships never got close to my speed numbers.  I could always run away from a stronger fleet or always catch that weaker and slower fleet.  And now with sensor's nerfed it makes for interesting possibilities.

I found the relevant quote from naselus RE ship speeds.

I hear what you are saying jju57, but I do disagree. It just becomes a giant game of galactic whackamole with 30-40 move ships, where you or the AI can just drop huge fleets on one another without the other even knowing they are there. Not to mention that moves = attacks in this game, as you can take out a good chunk of an empire with that many moves, and depending on your level of upgrades vs an opponent.

Carriers are the big culprit, as they auto upgrade to current tech. You could be at a stalemate with an opponent, catch a few weapons upgrades and kite through 10-20 fleets (depending on spacing of course) in a single turn with a 40 move super carrier.

With proper positioning you could be well outside an AI's empire, then drop in before the AI could possibly react and take a good chunk of their empire in a single turn. I doubt the AI would pull of said maneuver, as I believe it is beyond them, but it allows the player to just run circles around the poor AI.

Yeah, I'll look at ways to nerf it a bit.

Is there a mod somewhere that just fixes/increases the terrible habitable planet spawn rate on abundant settings, specifically on medium to larger maps without all the extra changes?

Not sure exactly, do mean within this mod or only? 

anyway here is a post on how to make more  habitable planets

https://forums.galciv3.com/467610/page/1/#3566467

Was looking for a mod where it only changed the planet spawn rate and nothing else, dont mind where its from

Although that post seems like it might be what im looking for. Ill try it out later, thanks!

no prob, are you ok with doing the mod? 

Ill probably just fiddle with the files, albeit most likely unsuccessfully lol. The 1.4 (maybe 1.5) update where they are going to make the map spawn planets based on number of races and map size, etc. Or something to that effect I remember hearing, will hopefully just fix it anyway. I was just getting impatient as each update seems to not fix the underling issue or making it worse by making planets more and more rare.

In reference to the speed of a ship I understand that moves = attacks.  But playing on the two largest maps is boring unless you speed numbers of 35-40.  It simply takes way too long to go anywhere.  So I'm worried you are balancing to smaller maps.  After all on these huge maps your fleets shouldn't be all bunched together anyway.  And with the nerfs to sensors you can't really see out that far so having a high speed doesn't allow many attacks if you don't know where the enemy is anyway.

Not sure if this is a mod issue or vanilla.  For ideology I grabbed the evil one to build their building that grants .1 point per turn.  Then for the next few choices I picked the good guy and got their .1 building.  The weird thing is that when I look at available points both the good and bad have the same amount available.  The game doesn't track good/bad points but totals them together.

With the help of others on these boards I was able to change the planet spawn rates to fit my play style.  I'm not at home to post the changes but I play on the next to largest map, have nice isolated pockets of stars, have a very manageable number of planets and reduced resource spam.  Not sure if this is the type of map you are looking for or not.

There'should fast and there'should imbalanced. A speed of 20 per turn is high enough for endgame imo. Beyond that, we start getting into being able to move ships the whole length of your empire in a turn, which removes a lot of strategy from the game. Ships hitting that kind of speed need to be seriously weak compared to general warships.

I hope im not jacking this thread.. and let me know if what im typing dosnt make sense its 1am atm and im typing on my phone lol!

I tend to stick with about the huge or gigantic maps with abundant minors, which probably dosnt help with them eating up the planets. Then I add 9 opponents, which once again is probably too many for the map size but I don't want to spend forever playing a map with half my time just traveling around or microing hundreds of deep space battles and stations. But I still like the variety of races.

The problem I find is, even on a gigantic map which I feel is an adequate size for that many players. You will get some races who are unlucky and start near 2-3 low PQ planets and nothing else. Then other races who have 5 to 7 planets in there own little star cluster. Then of course on huge your averaging 2-5 planets per race if your lucky, with most having one extreme or the other. This effectively means that the most powerful race is most often the race that just so happened to start near all the planets. As research and production is restricted by this it just compounds the power gap.

Now maybe this is just an issue with the map generator not at least attempting to even out the placements to give them a chance, but in the earlier beta even 1.0 I believe, all you had to do is set things to abundant and you would get tones of planets to go around, in some cases too many. But at least it was spawning them. It was more successfully then not at getting a nicer set of clustered planets across the map. Also atm im finding my starbases cant cover more then one planet as there are so few.
 
So I guess im looking for:
-Higher chance of planets spawning near each other or in the same system.
-More even spread of planets across the map, in both quantity and quality.
-A more even focus on evening out planets around each race (no idea if thats even possible)
-And one thing I just thought of, I wish there was more extreme worlds. Even on abundant with a huge map, you may at most get one extreme world per type. Effectively making the extended colony phases when the techs become available useless. As well as specializing also near useless, as there is only one planet to get anyway. Which still in turn eats at the possible habitable planet list.


To clarify, im not looking for anything crazy like 100 planets per race or anything. Even having about 8-10 per race with a few nice planet clusters hear and there would be nice. And as you suggested above more consistent resources, maybe not reduced just more clustered together to prevent starbase spam every 5 tiles polluting the map. Perhaps im just spoiled from the GalCiv2/Galciv3 Beta days. Either that or im remembering through rose colored glasses lol.

On the big maps there is no way you can move from your starting world to your empire's edge at even 40 speed.  By turn 200 or so your empire is about 100 moves across.  Simply trying to move from one end of an immense map to the other at 20 moves per turn takes way too long to do.  This is fine for medium sized maps in my opinion but not for the really big ones.