Twilight 1.92 Alpha

Old School Digital Distribution

Published on June 13, 2008 By ScottTykoski In GalCiv Journals

For your weekend amusement, we've cobbled together a fresh build of GC2:Twilight with some significant fixes.

http://sd.stardock.com/GalCiv2/GC2_Twilight_1_92_Alpha.zip

You'll be seeing the official build make its way onto Impulse and SDCentral next week, but in the meantime, just copy the contents of this ZIP into your 'Program FilesStardock/TotalGaming/GalCiv2/Twilight' folder and you should be good to go!

Here's the change log:

+ NEW: Improved Starport improvement graphics

+ NEW: Zoom to Mouse ursor option

+ NEW: Added ship components for Disruptors IV and Photonic Torpedo III techs

+ NEW: Removed a duplicate entry in the StarbaseModules.xml file. Also added some starbase modules with "Mining" and "ProductionAssist" abilities to compensate the races that do not have the factory line of techs in their tech trees (Iconians, Thalans, Korath, Yor). And I didn't just blindly add these, I made a spread sheet of all the starbase modules that each race has access to and filled in a few of the holes with new modules the best way I saw fit. They are tied to race-specific techs, so no other races will inadvertently be affected.

+ TWEAK: Made sure some techs were non-tradable and non-stealable because they now unlock starbase modules that I intend to be race-specific.

+ TWEAK: Fixed a few spelling/grammatical errors in the Yor tech tree. Specifically, changed "York" to "Yor" and "significant" to "significantly"

+ TWEAK: Fixed a typo in the Thalan tech tree. Changed "product" to "produce"

+ TWEAK: The research cost penalty has been reduced

+ TWEAK: Removed the description for the Divergent Evolution tech from both the Drath and Altarian tech trees so I could put it in techTree.xml. The description was exactly the same in the race tech trees including a bunch of misplaced linebreaks, which I fixed.

+ FIXED: A few typos in the descriptions of some ship components. Namely, when describing the numeric amount of HP or % boost a component gives.

+ FIXED: The Krynn were using the Torian's description for Aquatic World Colonization. Removed that, so it'll use the default description now

+ FIXED: Added "Space Weapons" and "Space Defense" techs back into the Thalan tech tree in their usual place right before the weapons and defense branches. I made them cheaper than usual so you can still have a quick research route to those branches of the tree. The reason I had to add them back in is because they provide starbase modules that are prereqs to other starbase modules that are still being unlocked in the thalan tree. Without access to the prereq starbase modules however, any modules that depend on them are impossible to use. Simply adding the two techs back into the tree fixes the issue.

+ FIXED: Bug where you could buy several improvements for the planet on the same turn from the quick build screen.

+ FIXED: Bug where if you bought a ship on a planet, you couldn't buy an improvement that turn

+ FIXED: Bug where the colony management screen didn't always have the most recent data

+ FIXED: Planet height maps that were placing tiles in the 'ocean' parts of the planet images

+ FIXED: Mind Control Center improvement

+ FIXED: Modified plague and disease mega-events to notify a player that they must research antivirus software or firewalls as a robotic race to find the cure, not plague cure or disease cure

+ FIXED: Gravity Accelerators were missing a Special ID, which was causing a crash when they were built

+ FIXED: Now can't trade Ascension starbases

EDIT: Please make sure you have the most recient version of Twilight downloaded.

Comments (Page 3)

IDMopman

on Jun 14, 2008

I certainly appreciate the patch you guys have done a great job as always but I personally would like the option to slow down tech if possible.

Either a new "epic" pacing tech speed or the possibility of adding a negative morale bonus to tech buildings to make a more balanced planet build desireable( at this moment people often put tech buildings up whenever they have spare room ) . It would have the added bonus of increasing the value of tech bonus tiles on planets.

WIllythemailboy

on Jun 14, 2008

You could always mod such a system in - the tech editor is relatively user-friendly. The sheer number of techs in TA would make this a fairly daunting task, though.

I'm not sure the negative morale bonus is possible, though. Really all it would do is force a VR center instead of a research building on one tile. Again, try it out on the structure editor.

Hawawaa

on Jun 15, 2008

Thank You Stardock!

e-stab

on Jun 15, 2008

a new "epic" pacing tech speed

Seconded! I'd like to see that since the very first day GC2 came out.

IDMopman

on Jun 15, 2008

actually it would only apply to the tech buildings themselves so there would only be about a dozen or so that I know of and the change would be minor simply adding a negative number to the morale column. And yes I can easily create a mod to do this I was simply wondering if it might not be something that would add to the flavor of the game without creating a great deal of difficulty for the players or the programmers.

manbear

on Jun 16, 2008

Played through a full game with the patch for a diplomacy win with 8 majors, 8 minors, immense universe and 100% stable. In my opinion, at average tech speed, the tech progression was just fine. I tend to do a lot of tech trading so if I set it to disallow tech trading, I would just increase the starting tech speed setting a bit.

Nice to see the AI values medium, large and huge scale building techs now. I had to pry those techs from their cold dead hands!

Even the minors build cruisers now, I was impressed.

Still an AI shortcoming is they still don't place fleets on their world. Their doing a better job of building good planetary defenseive ships, the only problem is I can still bring my fleet (big ship) in there and pick them off one by one by one. I think the AI does have sufficient logistics and I know they can build the planetary fleet improvement but they don't. The AI needs to forms fleets in orbit or have a high priority of obtaining/building the fleet manager tile improvement. That stack of 50 fighters and frigates doesn't do them any good as is currently.

1. Negotiations menu. Please have automax accept for IP's just like BC's. That would be great. Makes negotiating deals so much easier. What can I say I am a deal making IP pincher.

2. Negotiations menu. Please list tech cost before the techs! This would speed up my diplomacy 10x! When you got a list of techs 50+ long it gives me a headache and wastes so much time, right click, oh that's the value, close, right click, oh that's the value, close ad naseum. Again I am a tech trading extraordinaire! Just saves me hours of wasted time, thanks!

3. Through event all the minors (and major races) got spies infiltrated on their planets which crippled the minor races permanently. Either that global event needs to be changed or minors need a way to remove spies. An oversight obviously.

4. Conquering should not allow mutiple once only buildings such as technology capital, economic capital, political capital or manufacturing capital. Simply if you conquer such a planet with a unique tile development that improvement should be destroyed. Better yet have a popup asking player if they would like to make that planet their new unique! This then would be the only way to move your capital buildings once they are built.

5. Finally AI does not keep it's approval rating high enough, it is always 50-60% which is yellow, 70%+ is green. Makes it to easy to invade their planets and slows down the AI's population growth compared to the player. For high growth races this is no problem but tends to cripple slow growth races. I never, for example, see the Arcean race fair well in expansion. This is because all AI's treat approval the same. What the AI SHOULD be doing is if they are behind on population then they try to improve approval say 70-90%. If they are a fast growing race then they should care much less about approval and keep it between 50-70%. This would make slow growth AI's much stronger. Currently the base pop growth rate is a very powerful determinant of which races succeed. In my games, the races with the fastest base pop growth rates always prosper because they all treat approval the same.

So the AI could have a choose, breed like rats and live in a hell hole or breed like turtles and live in paradise and get lot's of immigrants. This would balance the AI races much better.

Michael

Baka^Ni

on Jun 16, 2008

Alt-tab bug is still present

inane3

on Jun 16, 2008

Wow, it's amazing to watch this game just get better and better. I really appreciate all the hard work that goes into this game. It's funny how a lot of the game mechanics I just take for granted now, but were new to me before Galciv2 and ToA. I'd have a hard time now going back to a single tech tree for all races.
A few small questions/suggestions:
-I'd suggest changing Thalan's Hyperion Matrix food bonus from 8 to like 4 or 5. If you build it on he homeworld it creates morale problems later when you 22+ billions tax payers.
-I realize the Thalans need to be vastly different than the other races, but they really do need some sort of help in the farming department. Maybe their own farming tech?
-I was playing around with the military starbases. The ship defense assist module seems buggy to me. It doesn't seem to actually add defenses to my ships. The offense assist module seemed to work though

Thanks for all the hard work, I love the new starport graphic.

DivineWrath

on Jun 16, 2008

I recently managed to finish a game, and it seems that the AI have their teeth back or something. That, or I'm too accustomed to the AI not being able to tech up in weapons as fast that they did.

Long story short, the Iconians (me) vs the Korath. The Korath was the leader in weapons technology most of the game and two other civs attacked me shortly after the Korath declared war. Once I got my Large ships built, I beat back the Arceans (gaining many planets in the process) and made peace with the Yor. From there, I got huge ships just in time to deal with the Korath Nightmare Torpedos. Once I took a few of their planets, I used stolen Nightmare Torpedos, my huge hulls, a thick layer of organic hull plating, and some Aereon Missile Defense to make my ships were nearly invulnerable.

Near the end, I had to worry about a Korath tech victory! I haven't played a game like that for a while.

DivineWrath

on Jun 16, 2008

4. Conquering should not allow mutiple once only buildings such as technology capital, economic capital, political capital or manufacturing capital. Simply if you conquer such a planet with a unique tile development that improvement should be destroyed. Better yet have a popup asking player if they would like to make that planet their new unique! This then would be the only way to move your capital buildings once they are built.

I like the idea of seeking out those super projects (if only the AI could pick better homes for them). It makes me feel powerful if I can nab 2 or more Hyperion Logistics systems. What I don't like is not being able to build your own once you steal someone elses (there are reasons why you should wait to build them).

-I was playing around with the military starbases. The ship defense assist module seems buggy to me. It doesn't seem to actually add defenses to my ships. The offense assist module seemed to work though

Were you using defenses on those ships? Ships without defenses don't benefit from defense assist module, and ships without weapons don't benefit from offense assist modules.

e-stab

on Jun 17, 2008

Alt-tab bug is still present

Alt-Tabbing should be no problem when playing in windowed mode. You can change that in the game options and as long as you use the same resolution as on your desktop it won't make a visual difference.

Valakov

on Jun 17, 2008

planetary logistics could use a look-see still.

having the "base" logistics of a planet = 1/2 or 1.0, with buildings to increase this amount would allow the AI to defend its planets much better.

as it stands AI planets have a tendancy to be XP farms for fleets, with only 1 ship being engaged by your whole fleet at a time. this would also allow the ai to build better defenders in general, with the assumption that they will be in fleets.

manbear

on Jun 17, 2008

Sorry having multiple tech capitals for example is "gamey" to me. Either one should be allowed on every planet or just one period no matter what.

manbear

on Jun 17, 2008

Wow, it's amazing to watch this game just get better and better. I really appreciate all the hard work that goes into this game. It's funny how a lot of the game mechanics I just take for granted now, but were new to me before Galciv2 and ToA. I'd have a hard time now going back to a single tech tree for all races.A few small questions/suggestions:-I'd suggest changing Thalan's Hyperion Matrix food bonus from 8 to like 4 or 5. If you build it on he homeworld it creates morale problems later when you 22+ billions tax payers.-I realize the Thalans need to be vastly different than the other races, but they really do need some sort of help in the farming department. Maybe their own farming tech?-I was playing around with the military starbases. The ship defense assist module seems buggy to me. It doesn't seem to actually add defenses to my ships. The offense assist module seemed to work thoughThanks for all the hard work, I love the new starport graphic.

I recently started a game with an immense map, scattered stars outlay, 9 edited default races and max minor races. I also started with 3 good, 3 neutral and 3 evil major races. A diplomacy victory won't be so easy now. I always set planets to abundant but coloniseable to rare just as our know universe is right now. I really don't think there are a lot of terran class planets waiting around to be colonised. Also it get's a bit tedious trying to micromanage too many worlds.

I maxed out all the AI races on their build points (they are much more formidable now, think Yor=Borg

) I also changed their CPU setting to mid level and boy Brad was right it makes a world of difference! Sure turn processing takes a little longer but I feel like I am getting challenged without a lot of AI cheats. That is why I do not set them above "intelligent". They are using the enhanced behaviourial logics and with more CPU usage without any special resource advantages. That is how you can really tell if the AI is coded well or not.

I have not tried max CPU useage yet but can only imagine how smart(ruthless) the AI would be then.

kerzain

on Jun 17, 2008

Anyone else crashing when they create a Terror Star + 1 Fighter Fleet in this patch?

Welcome Guest! Please take the time to register with us.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:

Richer content, access to many features that are disabled for guests like commenting on the forums.
Access to a great community, with a massive database of many, many areas of interest.
Access to contests & subscription offers like exclusive emails.
It's simple, and FREE!