I have tried removing these tags already and it does allow you to communicate with them as you would have before the changes, but the real problem lies in the changes to the AI for minor factions. So far I haven't been able to find any AI files relating to minors, or at least haven't understood them if I have. If the minors still build and use ships in the base game with crusade uninstalled then at least I know the file must be within the Crusade DLC folder. 

Thanks for the Reply though right now my only solution has been through the tech trees but that solution doesnt add them into the game the same way minors or limit their ability to participate in the UP.

Quoting lyssailcor,

reply 3

As far as I understand it there is not much AI behaviour you can mod by tinkering with XML files ... if I'm wrong I would love to hear otherwise

Yea I've been worried about that, I just can't believe they would make minor civs nothing more than a planet. Now it's only real functionality is for the mega event. They were so useful before. If you wanted to fix exploiting of them for techs all you had to do was add the does not trade tag. There is no reason at all to have them in the game now, they may as well have just removed them entirely. At least before if you didn't like them it was simple enough to set their generation to none in map options. There really was no reason to remove their AI when they were optional in the first place or you could simply add a tag/ability to make them act as they do now.

Agree with this. I always liked having the minors expand and be diplomatically and militarily important and relevant - albeit without the ability to culture-bomb them (and no UP presence). It does feel like a step backward to turn them into Civ-V city states. In GC2 I gave them different AI profiles and GC3 I used a 'minor is major' mod previously

Or you could make a bunch of custom races and set them on low AI.

Making them into a full blown major civ causes a few problems that the minor civ tag prevented.

-players being able to select the races

-the civs taking up ai slots for the map

-the civs taking more colonies than they had colony ships

just to name a couple

My last attempt to make them do anything included editing the civ to have starting surveyors and constructors and adding a new entry in AI strategy Defs based on the Pirate entry and directing it to the minor player type.

This appeared to change nothing other than having 3 ships sit next to the planet and do nothing. Perhaps someone else with a better understanding of the ai xml's would have more ideas.

I have however discovered a way to hide a major faction from player and Ai selection screens which gives me an Idea.

My current plan when i have a moment is to make all of the minor factions into major factions using the tag to hide them from the selection screens. Then I can hopefully spawn them in with events on turn 1 depending on map size. This should solve the first 2 issues.

Then if the game allows it I will have to make a new tech tree based on the general one the game uses excluding the techs for building colonizers.

Or if the game wont accept a new tech tree, I suppose i could make the Synthetic, carbon based and silicone based race traits a requirement for the colony module  and then use a new race trait called minor just for minor civs. Although you would be able to choose it when building custom races. so there is that downside.

Honestly though, it's not perfect and you will always have the same minors in every game, as well as the issue of their starting systems. I'm not sure yet if the event that spawns a faction also spawns the starting system you set for them. 

Any ideas for Improvements? Has anyone else had luck re-enabling the ai for minor civs? even the mega event that spawns a minor civ does nothing currently.

Thats what I'm hoping to fix, I was half way through a mod to improve minor races to make them a fun aspect of gameplay when Crusade came out and haulted my progress with a brick wall :/

They are piggybank for you to sell techs to them or trade some techs that they been bought or sold by other races. Since AI doesn't has their own working economy, they get injection of free money periodically to save them from bankrupt themselves so you get free money out of them easily. You could extort them with treaties too.

If I want minor that talking to me, I just download many of other races out from workshop or make my own. Make them sub-par with majority of negative traits to reflect that they aren't suppose to be major faction and be done with.

From lore perspective, minors don't have Hyper Drive technology which is funny because you could sell that to them and they wouldn't advance themselves to be major faction.

I've seen it before Intrigue.  The explanation from the devs was that the minor would get a random ideology event and choose the benevolent trait that awards a free colony ship.  Doesn't happen very often.

Minors given the salvage trait also used to make use of the colony ships they salvaged, ones gained from ideology, anomalies and from faction starting ship traits.