Twilight of the Arnor Beta 4

Published on January 4, 2008 By CariElf In GalCiv Journals

The Thalans and the Altarians are finally in the beta. They're going to need tweaking, but we figured that we'd give them to you anyway. And before you ask, yes, most of the buildings that the Thalan start out with ARE supposed to be galactic achievements. Read the tech descriptions.

+ NEW: Thalans are now enabled

+ NEW: Altarians are now enabled

+ NEW: Planet Improvements:

+ Shrine of Tandis
+ Social Matrix
+ Church of Valor
+ Gaia Vortex
+ Brain Washing Center
+ Technology Matrix L1 through L3
+ Manufacturing Matrix L1 through L3
+ Zero-G Amusement
+ Hyperion Matrix
+ Temporal Entertainment Matrix
+ Economic Direction Unit

+ NEW: Re-designed Invasion screen is now in the game

+ NEW: Several new starbase modules added

+ NEW: Ships that don't have weapons now have a maint. Cost associated with them.

+ NEW: Ship maint cost increased to correspond with higher level of money in game

+ NEW: Base speed of ships increased by +1.

+ NEW: Cost of technologies re-designed to be based on # of habitable planets in the galaxy as opposed to the size of the galaxy. This will have the general effect of making techs cost considerably more but this can be adjusted in the user settings. The availability of "immense sized" galaxies had caused techs to be ridiculously cheap. This will need to be play tested and tweaked.

+ NEW: Implemented fleet version of IsTerrorStar to return TRUE if any ship in fleet is a terror star

+ NEW: Terror Stars can now be added to fleets via fleet rally points

+ NEW: If a terror star is added to a fleet, it NULLIFIES the effect of fleet speed enhancing modules such as warp bubbles.

+ FIXED: Crash when hitting CTRL+N

+ FIXED: Bug where Super Dominator ships don't have a model created for them

+ FIXED: Tech tree was listing Space Weapons as a mass driver category tech.

+ FIXED: The Dread Lords and Dark Avatar campaigns will now work when playing with the Twilight of the Arnor exe
   + Mods are currently disabled for Campaign games
   + When loading the Dread Lords or Dark Avatar campaigns, the data definitions are taken from the older data files to avoid problems caused by inconsistencies in the tech trees ship components, etc.

+ FIXED: In a scenario, when a tech has a restricted parent tech, the tech is now marked as restricted

+ FIXED: Campaign and Metaverse games now save the custom race xml files in their subfolders of My Documents\My Games\GC2Twilight to avoid invalid race configs because they were created with different data

+ FIXED: Bug where race configs with negative abilities were marked as invalid

+ FIXED: Bug where trade routes got reset to their home planets after loading from a save game

+ FIXED: Crash related to terror stars in fleets with constructors

+ FIXED: Bug where incorrect number of moves was calculated when a single warp bubble ship was added to a fleet via a fleet rally point

+ FIXED: Bug where if United Planets was forcing a government type, AI civs could still change their government type

+ FIXED: Typo in event message "Trippled" à "tripled"

+ FIXED: Bug where if you disband a fleet, ships would have more moves than if you removed the ships individually

+ FIXED: when in "place agent" mode, clicking on an un-colonized planet to place the agent on would wrongly show the same popup as clicking on a planet owned by a minor race. This was caused when we went back and let you spy on the Dreadlords, but none of the other minor races. I put in an extra check so that when planet owner is CIV_INVALID_PLAYER_ID it falls though like we originally intended.

+ TWEAK: Arceans now have a -10% speed penalty

+ TWEAK: Thalans have a -30% population growth penalty Far fewer starting

+ TWEAK: Bonuses in general for civs as their native advantages are now expressed more in their technology trees and enable greater customization by players.

+ TWEAK: Interest Rate ability renamed as Purchase Now Discount.

+ TWEAK: Tech Tree xml files are read in from /Data/(Language)/TechTrees folder instead of all folders in /Data/(Language)

+ TWEAK: Added dialog to let user know if they are trying to attack a defenseless planet that they need a transport to invade

+ TWEAK: There is no longer any need for DefaultTechTree.xml. The file has been removed.

+ The "Default" tech tree is now generated by the game to include all possible techs

+ This eliminates the need for us to constantly update this file whenever we add or remove techs

+ TWEAK: The hint file now supports tech-tree-specific hints

Comments (Page 3)

George Simpson

on Jan 07, 2008

I think that's it's constant throughout a game, they just changed the flat rate for this update because other changes have increased overall cash flow (in theory... maybe).

Neilo

on Jan 07, 2008

increased overall cash flow

In beta 4???? Really, my econ is dead, and along with the high maintenance it is game killing. I do hope i am not alone, i have seen others mention that there is a problem with cash flow in beta 4 but i have not heard of it being addressed.

shiva7663

on Jan 08, 2008

I kind of wish that Minors would just get a "minor race tech tree" that doesn't give them access to any unique/race-specific techs and does not include any of: Deeper Knowledge, Galactic Understanding, Near Omniscience, Beyond Mortality, Technology Victory

I think at the very least, the Dark Yor tech tree should be similar to the Yor tech tree; other minor's tech trees could be plausibly dominated by their assumed good to evil alignment.

Phaedyme

on Jan 08, 2008

Well, whatever as long as it's consistent and doesn't let them research tech victory.

econundrum1

on Jan 08, 2008

I agree now that the default tech tree contains all possible technologies the minor races need a minor race tech tree instead.

Also I hope custom races in the final release can choose any technology tree including a custom one made with the editor or any other races tech tree.

As far as the economy is concerned they may have gone a bit far with rebalancing it but I think mostly people just need to change their tactics to deal with the more stringent economic climit in this release. I expect it will get some rebalancing but keeping a healthy economy was just no challange in previous betas for most races.

And the Thalian's having less people to start with just means they grow the population 30% more slowly because as has been mentioned before for most races not all members of the race choose to join the civilization so the civ. can grow by recruiting, but the Thalians have only a limited number of their people who have traveled back with them so have to grow mostly by breeding.

The Thalians do play very differently from other races since their are few buildings to build early on until they tech up a lot but they can produce ships on their home world very quickly and have a poor economy and population growth I think maybe a more meassured approach to the colony rush may work beter.

e-stab

on Jan 08, 2008

+ NEW: Cost of technologies re-designed to be based on # of habitable planets in the galaxy as opposed to the size of the galaxy.

A personal "Thank you!" for this one!

Necaradan666

on Jan 17, 2008

You can play the old campaigns in TA... but they are messed up, ship building and tech trees most visibly.

CariElf

on Jan 17, 2008

You can play the old campaigns in TA... but they are messed up, ship building and tech trees most visibly.

How are they messed up? Can you please give me more details and possibly screenshots?

Bellack

on Jan 18, 2008

I have a question, what does the '*' next the the Techs in the Diplonatic screen mean?

CariElf

on Jan 18, 2008

I have a question, what does the '*' next the the Techs in the Diplonatic screen mean?

It means that it's specific to that race and that the only way to get that tech is to trade for it.

Ryan Zec

on Jan 19, 2008

But one question remains...when will those 5 editors be released?
I don't know if we'll be releasing them during the betas.

That is pretty disappointing, it was one of the big reasons i pre-ordered the game.

Pdubya

on Feb 10, 2008

I pre-purchased ToA today and have been dinking around with it all afternoon. For the most part it's been great, but I have a couple questions for the devs.

Playing all these games on Immense or largest size of galaxy as it is new to Beta.

1) I am REALLY having a hard time getting enough income to make the game work guys... It became apparent very early that "stuff is EXPENSIVE", so I build only what I absolutely need to get things going- one at a time, yet I can't seem to get enough population on the first colony (not even thinking about a second yet!) to make them earn their keep. I only have a flagship and miner after the first colony, but I am practically broke.
Unless you guys intended to make the early progress glacial, something seems to have gone awry. I have tried Human, Iconian and Alterian races and it ends up much the same.
I noticed how much more expensive maintenance is for research and ships. Is it intended that the home planet rely on the research from the base structure for a while?
This all has me scratching my head for some kind of solution, as I obviously can't play like I used to with GC2 Dread Lords. I am used to buying a few (2-4) structures early on to prime the pump, but maybe this is what is driving my economy south? Even with reduced "buying outright", there doesn't seem to be enough money coming in to alter the eventual slide to empire bankruptcy.

2) I believe due to the increased costs for structures and ships, the spending slider has very little effect on turning your economy from deficit to surplus. Increasing taxes works somewhat, but only offers a temporary solution with its own issues.
Am I completely missing something here?

Thanks

Loupdinour

on Feb 11, 2008

First off, the Iconians are horrid for an early economy due to structure maintenance. Due to the strength of their building, you really can afford to place very few of them, then swamp the planet with econ buildings.

Second off, I don't start building anything on planet until it has at least 2 billion people so that it can somewhat sustain itself.

Did you jump from DL right to TA? There were some economic changes (colony building cost, morale buildings, population/morale recalc) done in the time of DA that also would have helped prepare yourself for TA.

Spartan

on Feb 11, 2008

TA is shaping up to be the definitive swan song x-pack product for any franchise to date in my opinion.

Loupdinour

on Feb 11, 2008

TA is shaping up to be the definitive swan song x-pack product for any franchise to date in my opinion.

How about that, I learned something today. The definition of "swan song". Thank you 1Spartan for extending my vocabulary.

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