Galactic Civilizations II: 1.1 BETA 4A

This is what is new over beta 4 of 1.1.  This, in theory, will be the last public beta of 1.1.

+ Optimized fleet manager screen for faster response times Implemented 

+ New Option: "Hide Nebulae and Stars in Ship Preview Windows". This option fixed some compatibility/crash issues some users ran into (video card related).

+ Only thumbnails for ships your civ can use are pre-loaded Fixed bug where UP would vote to change to Democracy, but would changeto Federation instead

+ AI now factors "Fear" into relations. If someone is going around conquering others, they'll begin to get nervous about them.

+ AI will tend to band together to try to stop someone who is going around conquering them (whether that be human or another AI player who is mopping everyone up).

+ AI players will evaluate threats and put together coalitions against aggressive players or at the very least take a more active role in thwarting aggression from the sidelines. (LOTS involved in implementing this).

+ Computer players weigh risk of being ganged up on if they start a war of aggression before starting said war of aggression.

+ AI Much more effective at evaluating threats and discarding false positives.

+ Some AI players will be more aggressive at secretly paying someone else off to go to war with another player.

+ Many new messages to human player to let them know if someone has gone to war with them because they've been paid off or some other reason.

+ Some new AI upgrading code to ships to prevent it from trying to upgrade Precursor light cruisers (aka Rangers).

+ Torian and related AIs now adjust what they are building/researching based on the status of the galaxy. If the galaxy is on fire with war, it begins to rearm.

+ Lots of tweaks on which ships are built.

+ AI much better at focusing on tech researched based on its own strategy. Previously it tended to over focus on how much a tech cost so it would tend to research techs that weren't central to its strategy simply because they were "Cheap".  Such distractions really add up.

+ A LOT of work on the tactical AI, picking out which ships to go after, how to focus power and project it in a focused way.

+ AI will move offensive ships into defensive positions in orbit of a planet if it feels threatened.

+ If the galactic atmosphere gets dangerous (i.e. lots of wars) AI will start fortifying its planets more to prevent sneak attacks.

+ Starting spend rate changed to 67. "New" users will hence see the game pace improved (i.e. the "I just keep having to hit the turn button over and over" issue where people who don't increase their spend rate end up waiting a long time should be helped a bit).

+ Game now keeps track of how many civilizations a given race has conquered. pCiv->ulCivsConquered.

+ New API: FindBestFriend.  Returns a player's best friend that they can reasonably trust. Takes into account if said friend is going around conquering everyone and is not allied.

+ Saved game and load game format changed to support new features.

+ Saved game makes use of new weapon and defense focus features.

+ Planets under alien influence defect faster.

+ Tweaked planet seeding so that there's a bit more difference between rare and uncommon.

+ Fixed rare crash where a ship has been destroyed but the bad pointer is left in the orbit list. Now it will NULL it out if the ship's been destroyed.

+ Cleaned up the way influence ability affects the map. Much better.

+ AI will tend to use space on a ship design more optimally.

+ AI: If you're playing on Impossible (or whatever the most difficult level) the AI gets a free miniaturization ability. At this difficulty level, our focus is to provide god-like players with a challenge. (besides, if you're beating it at genius or higher, you're probably doing something similarly cheesy <g>).

+ Report screen on foreign relations screen tweaked to show fear as a negative (or positive) effect on relations.

+ Influence on the map tends to spread further into empty areas.

+ AI somewhat more shrewed in negotiations.

+ AI takes into account how many wars the player has started before making peace.

+ Iconian home world nerfed to 14.

+ Lots of new alien dialog.

+ Various tweaks to costs and benefits to planetary improvements based on player feedback.

+ Iconians are now good (were neutral).

+ Torians made slightly nicer ("more gooder" <g>).

+ Influence modules made more powerful at the high end.

+ AIs consider hulls more important.