GalCiv II v1.7 Beta 1 Changelog

What's new

Published on September 18, 2007 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

Unlike many of our change logs, this one isn't as exhaustive in length but instead focuses on have fewer much more significant items in it.

Here is what's new:

+ NEW: Lease and Maintenance tab on the Economy Screen to manage your finaces better
+ NEW: The CivManager now keeps a log of events that have happened during the game
+ NEW: Governor that changes the Ship a colony is building
+ NEW: Governor that sends all ships of a specified class, and the colonies building that ship class, to target a given rallypoint
+ VERY IMPORTANT CHANGE: Made debug.err always go in user defined data directory. This is to deal with problems encountered by people with limited user accounts and for consistency with Vista.

+ NEW: Hitting CTRL + PRTSCN (Printscreen key) will save a screenshot in My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\Screenshots
+ NEW: Made it so that the saved scoring information also saves mod name + description if mods are enabled
+ NEW: Local High score list including default high scores; files are saved in My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar\SandboxGames
+ NEW: Anomalies Randomly Reappear over the course of the game

+ TWEAK: Terran Alliance more inclined to focus on building larger starships
+ TWEAK: Optimized AI sorting routines (performance)
+ TWEAK: Spore module more expensive
+ TWEAK: Spore Weapons technology more expensive
+ TWEAK: Morale buildings more powerful
+ TWEAK: New lightmap for planets courtesy of Stefan and i-mod productions

+ FIX: Bug where ignored races still could be chose in the Opponentwnd
+ FIX: Reduced lag when clicking on a star ship caused by a function that was looping through ALL the ships in the galaxy and setting them to not be selected whether or not they actually were selected
+ FIX: Changed it so that the stacked ships and fleet windows recycle their entries so that they aren't constantly allocating and deallocating. The stackedshipwnd will attempt to shrink the number of saved entries if it hasn't used the last max number in awhile - this may need tweaking if it affects memory usage
+ FIX: Bug where notification icons were not showing up
+ FIX: Bug where the turn button was always green even if there were ships with moves left
+ FIX: Crash where code was still trying to access destroyed ships; they are now removed from the main list the turn they are destroyed so that nothing can access them
+ FIX: Bug where ignored races still could be chose in the Opponentwnd
+ FIX: The distribution of planetary tile bonuses so that there is a good number of them and that they are likely to occur on the starting homeworlds, but no more than 3 on the starting home worlds.
+ FIX: Bug where planet thumbnails were not being reused even if the planet surfaces were identical
+ FIX: Bug that was causing unnecessary information to be saved
+ FIX: Bug in the Dread Lords campaign when playing from Dark Avatar where it was not possible to continue due to it not finding the location of the next mission's files
+ FIX: Bug in the Dread Lords campaign when playing from Dark Avatar where scenarios with the Dread Lords would never end because they had the incorrect race ID
+ FIX: Bug where the graphs did not scale properly and would end abruptly without taking up the entire graphwnd
+ FIX: Bug with activation code on Win98.
+ FIX: Changed code that writes out debug messages to be more threadsafe
+ FIX: Made it so that the dxpacks are kicked out of memory after the screen has been created if there are not multiple instances of the screen, like custom list box entries, thus reducing the amount of stuff kept in memory.
+ FIX: Changed screen code to make sure that the textures created for the screens do not create mip map chains, which are unnecessary in screens and just take up more memory
+ FIX: Crash caused by not being able to find strings in the flavor text files (text that appears when the AI talks to you)

It's available on Stardock Central as an update to the Dark Avatar module to Galactic Civilizations II. The "check for betas" check box must be selected to see.

Comments (Page 3)

drrider

on Sep 19, 2007

Cari, I was looking through the html files at the actual data for things like techs and morale buildings.

Is it intentional that, out of all the extreme colonization techs, Advanced Heavy Gravity Colonization is the only one that has a very low AIValue figure (5). All of the other colonization techs have an AIValue level of 25 or 26.

Also, I'll put in a plug again for getting my personal pet peeve glitch fixed. Planet rings DO NOT currently provide any actual bonus tp's, even though the Details screen will list the +10% to research for rings among the planet bonuses.

drrider

FortyTwo

on Sep 19, 2007

Many thanks for the ongoing updates!

Now, to the questions. I'm getting the same "String not found" message; I've tried an uninstall/reinstall with no luck.

Also, while I really like the idea of paying off loans early, I don't see the strategic advantage of it. Correct me if I'm viewing this wrong, but the payoff cost appeared to be equal to the weekly payment times the term of the loan. Shouldn't the player get the advantage of paying off the principal now, thereby avoiding future interest payments? This would allow for much more interesting decisions on present vs. future spending.

drrider

on Sep 19, 2007

Folks,

For those who have been wondering about new values but did not know where to look to scope it out for themselves:

Morale Building Improvements:
These are modest, but positioned at a critical spot in the development cycle.
Entertainment Network (the 1st level morale tool) - increased from +5% to +10%.
Multimedia Center (the 2nd level morale tool) - increased from +10% to +15%.
Other morale buildings, colony morale ratings remainthe same.

Spore ship costs:
These are rather substantial increases, relative to the previous values.
Spore Weapons development: increased from 1500 tp base to 1800 tp base.
Spore Module cost: increased from 50 mp base to 100 mp base.

drrider

drrider

on Sep 19, 2007

+ FIX: The distribution of planetary tile bonuses so that there is a good number of them and that they are likely to occur on the starting homeworlds, but no more than 3 on the starting home worlds.

This is pretty harsh on the quality of starting positions for those of us who play a lot of RARE and UNCOMMON settings. Could we get that limit scaled to the Rarity settings, so that there is the possibility of your HW on low density settings having as many as 4 bonus tiles?

All Rare, Obscene or Suicidal game is even more 'ugly adjectives' if you can't start with some hefty home bonuses to make up for the sparcity of total tiles (across your 1-3 planets).

drrider

DethAdder

on Sep 19, 2007

I just want to say thanks for the optimization. I just loaded a large two year map that was pulling 677MB of RAM. It still loads at that, but then the collection routine or whatever it is kicked in and brought it down under 400MB within a few seconds. The performance gain is noticable and appreciated

. All the additions are quite welcome, but the framerate thing was a biggie with my old system.

sam0t

on Sep 20, 2007

+ FIX: Bug where the turn button was always green even if there were ships with moves left

And I thought this was somekinda weird feature, its been around so long. Testing it out now

Vamphaery

on Sep 20, 2007

This is an excellent update. Yet again Stardock delivers lol. I wish every game offered such extensive free updates beyond bug fixes.

Would it be possible to incorporate into the event log specific instances in which the player convinces the AI to declare war on another race rather than merely the starts and culminations of wars? I've not yet played a new game this far, so I'm also curious as to whether our ethical alignment choice will be counted in the event log?

This is a fantastic update. The planets do look different to me. Were the new heightmaps included or not? Maybe it's just my eyes lol.

MnHebi

on Sep 20, 2007

The update is most excellent, but the event log has a bug with surrendering. When the Iconians surrendered to me, the event log said that correctly, but right after that even it said i had surrendered to the Iconians, which was not true. Just to be more specific, i was playing a custom made race, and the game was started in a previous version of Dark Avatar. And here is a screenshot of the log: [Link=http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/4112/toronlogxg1.png]Toron Harvest Force Events[/LINK]

KevinLorenz

on Sep 20, 2007

I would like it that when you do soil enrichment and the like that there would be a chance for a new planetary tile bonus to show up on the newly usable planet tile.

smartie0

on Sep 20, 2007

When you press Ctrl+N the AI was resetting difficulty level.
Did you fix that?

CariElf

on Sep 20, 2007

By the way, if you are looking at the Guard function code, do you think that we could get a "Fortify Location" or "Hold Position" (or however you want to word it) command? It would help to manage sensor ships, and fleets dedicated to starbase defense if they didn't wake up every time a hostile ship arrives. Please and thanks.

Umm, could you describe exactly how you want this to work and e-mail it to carielf@stardock.com? I can't promise that I can get it in for 1.7 because there are still memory issues and some bug fixes that I want to deal with, but it could be a quick and easy feature for 2.0 if I don't get to it before then.

Is it intentional that, out of all the extreme colonization techs, Advanced Heavy Gravity Colonization is the only one that has a very low AIValue figure (5). All of the other colonization techs have an AIValue level of 25 or 26.

I'll have to ask Brad on that one.

Planet rings DO NOT currently provide any actual bonus tp's, even though the Details screen will list the +10% to research for rings among the planet bonuses.

I remember looking into this briefly when you first reported it, but I didn't draw any immediate conclusions. I'll have to look at it again.

Now, to the questions. I'm getting the same "String not found" message; I've tried an uninstall/reinstall with no luck.

What's the date on your screens.str and english.str files in your Dark Avatar directory? Check C:\Program Files\Stardock\SDCentral\Installed for the gc2_DarkAvatar.log file and send it into support@stardock.com or come into #galciv on irc.stardock.com between 9-5 (If you come in later than 5 the people who can best help you may be gone already). SDCentral has a chat feature if you're not familiar with IRC.

Also, while I really like the idea of paying off loans early, I don't see the strategic advantage of it. Correct me if I'm viewing this wrong, but the payoff cost appeared to be equal to the weekly payment times the term of the loan. Shouldn't the player get the advantage of paying off the principal now, thereby avoiding future interest payments? This would allow for much more interesting decisions on present vs. future spending.

Well, it's really less for strategic advantage (to do that properly, the AI would need to be able to do it as well) as to give you the opportunity to repair your finances if you get a lucky break like the economic boom, when you have tons of cash in your treasury because you can't spent it fast enough. Right now, we don't really calculate out the interest payment separately, so that would have to be something that we would have to change. We would be more likely to make this kind of change in an expansion or sequel since it's an actual gameplay change that would require balancing, etc.

It's actually not, as long as you have a fairly even distribution across all the habitable planets in the galaxy. But I hadn't thought to check on a tiny galaxy with everything Rare, tight clusters, and 9 opponents, which would result in the fewest number of habitable planets, and I did find that it wasn't able to place all the possible bonuses with the current distribution. So I changed both the method of reserving a number of bonuses for the reserved star systems and then made it so that instead of randomly picking a planet from a list, it randomly shuffles the list of planets as well as the list of bonuses, and then goes through the list in order, shuffling the list of planets after each pass. This achieves my aim of getting a more even distribution on the homeworlds without penalizing the total number of bonuses available in the galaxy. This was true of the other sizes of galaxies with various availabilities of habitable planets as well; I hit CTRL+N several times with various settings and still saw 2-3 planetary bonus tiles on all the player's homeworlds. So this change will appear in the next update.

Would it be possible to incorporate into the event log specific instances in which the player convinces the AI to declare war on another race rather than merely the starts and culminations of wars? I've not yet played a new game this far, so I'm also curious as to whether our ethical alignment choice will be counted in the event log?

Regarding the first part, probably. The event log does not currently make an entry for when you choose your alignment.

When the Iconians surrendered to me, the event log said that correctly, but right after that even it said i had surrendered to the Iconians, which was not true.

Yeah, I have to look into that one.

When you press Ctrl+N the AI was resetting difficulty level. Did you fix that?

No, I still don't know what is causing that. When it was first reported, I looked into it, but it wasn't doing it for me in the debugger. I haven't actually gotten this to happen yet. It might help if someone told me exactly what settings they started out with, if they were starting up fresh or if they'd loaded a save game previously, etc.

MnHebi

on Sep 20, 2007

I don't know if this is a feature that could make it to the full 1.7, but i'd really want to be able to force other races to break up alliances with each other(allied races don't show up in the "attack race" options..). It's really annoying when i'm allied with someone, and i get attacked by a race who is allied with my ally, and i can't tell him to assist me in any way. Infact, i think it is a bug.

I was allied with the Krynn who in turn were allied with the Terran Alliance, when the Terran Alliance declared war on me the Krynn did not declare war on the Terran Alliance, and i could not convince them to attack them since they were allied..and due to this i lost a game as my military couldn't stand against them alone..

mementh

on Sep 20, 2007

When you press Ctrl+N the AI was resetting difficulty level. Did you fix that?

Cari.. i used Gigantic size
Abundent planets habitable planets stars anomolies asteroids
tech rate normal
8 minor races
tight cluster for stars

Disable tech trading
mega events
super abilities

vic conditions are all unchecked

Playing as terran
The AI is sub normal now

I am starting a new game against in 1.7 so i will let you know if i encounter. (i have before on these settings)

ZzzombieBunny

on Sep 20, 2007

++n

When you press Ctrl+N the AI was resetting difficulty level. Did you fix that?

I noticed recently that the AI seems to reset on races I have played, etc races that have customracexml file in the documents/mygames/GC2DarkAvatar.

Edit: Okay I ran some tests on the above theory and it didnt come through all that well, infact I couldnt get the AI to reset at all untill I started testing saved games. The AI seems to reset to Fool when doing a ctrl+n in a game loaded from a autosave.

FortyTwo

on Sep 20, 2007

What's the date on your screens.str and english.str files in your Dark Avatar directory?

Both Screens.str and English.str are dated 9/13/2007.

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