A comment like this explains while you've only acquired 4 Karma in 13 years on this forum.

This happens to me because I am playing on either Incredible, or at the moment being masochistic, Godlike.  Except for the uncatchable part.  It is indeed possible to leverage my knowledge of the escalation built into the economy to a point where I catch up and exceed the AI in technology.  Their bonuses give them an obscene head start, but they cannot keep up in the long run with a determined scheming human.

On levels below that, it becomes a lot easier to overcome any initial head start the AI gets.  It is especially easier to out colony rush them if you have a sparsely settled galaxy.

So, I am not sure I understand what your point here is.  You don't sound like a beginning player, but don't seem to be aware of the ability to out manage the AI.  Depending on your level of difficulty, I'm not talking about extreme micromanagement here, just applying basics consistently and creatively.  I'm too lazy for the check-every-turn type of management some folk use.  Your objection to yet more micromanagement advice is noted and agreed with.  But there has to be something that makes your experience different than mine.

Can you, without ranting please, despite the frustration, clarify what is happening and what you mean by "uncatchable"?

This comment is just utterly bizarre and deserved more contempt than I gave it, your previous paragraph was incorrect as well it had been mentioned although perhaps not in great detail.

The comment just screams of a massive ego I don't know what your intention was but it comes across as: I think too much of myself to play at a lower difficulty level where I can compete so that's the devs fault and don't give me your advice it's worth nothing to me, there isn't any good advice it's the games fault why I can't compete they should fix it.

I shouldn't have wasted my time replying probably.  I just found it annoying, was hoping to get more discussion on the economy features mentioned in the dev diary which I really care about.  There's tons of sources to help people improve at the game and catch up to the AI's on harder difficulty levels there's really zero need to be discouraged but since you don't want help I won't offer it.

Hopefully this thread can now get back on topic. 

 

Here's a link to the save for the last game I gave up on:  https://www.dropbox.com/s/gn7i180ogsmj64h/mak%27n%20money.GC3Sav?dl=1

Here's a screenshot of the trade screen:  https://www.screencast.com/t/EE6GHag3fp

It is turn 77 and the Iconians have 44 techs I don't possess.

I'm playing on gifted with global growth reduced to 0.05, population to production exponent at 0.94, a slight increase in the occurrence of bonus tiles on planets, and tech inflation set to:

 <!--Each time you research a tech in any tree the cost of all techs are raised by this exponent-->
  <TechInflationExponent_All>1.15</TechInflationExponent_All>
    <!--Each time you research a tech in any tree all techs cost is increesed by this multipyer.-->
  <TechInflationMultiplier_All>0.05</TechInflationMultiplier_All>
   
    <!--These values allow us to further inflate techs on a per tree basis, this is to discourage the
    player from drilling down a single branch of the tree too quickly, and over specializing.
    I have removed the exponent, and have only a small multiplier, since it is added to the overall inflation settings.-->
  <TechInflationExponent_Tree>1.25</TechInflationExponent_Tree>
  <TechInflationMultiplier_Tree>0.05</TechInflationMultiplier_Tree>

Tech brokering is disabled, I have vigilantly traded techs.  My Research hubs are not fully set up yet, and I did not, as I usually do, make my homeworld an early manufacturing hub to boost my initial production.

With the AI wasting development potential by auto-upgrading improvements while it possesses empty tiles I cannot see how they could be 44 techs ahead unless the Tech inflation values are not being applied to the AI players.

 

 

 

I am sorry, but you have a heavily modded environment and I can only comment on vanilla rules at best.  I have no skills to offer in trouble shooting mods at the level you are playing with, or ability to guess at what hidden consequences could be triggered.  Good luck with your games.  We each play it differently, and you are one very good example of that.  Enjoy!

So it turns out you're playing a heavily modded game that is near 100% the cause of your issues but you only mention it now after claiming the game to be broken.  Wow that's really priceless.  I'd wager the AI's aren't 44 techs ahead on turn 77 on gifted in an un-modded latest patch game.  Why wouldn't you just ask for help in the modding section?  lol ffs.

Umm, if you are using a modded game it is pretty ridiculous to expect the devs to change their game to fix issues with your modded game.  I mean seriously, your post now comes across as nothing more than a trolling post.

 

Besides a mod is not the vanilla game. As gifted the Ai. is given economic bonuses. The problem here is not the game, but you are playing a level that the game has stated as having economic bonuses. Assuming you are using a stock faction, and not a customised faction. The Iconians, and every other vanilla faction has techs other vanilla factions don't have. If this is the case then the Iconian tech tree is doing all right with 44 techs no one else has. If you are playing more than the 12 vanilla factions upwards of a 100 factions there are probably redundancies with similar factions with the same tech trees. So in this case it is significant if you are playing a vanila, and if you are playing a custom faction. 

On a different note gifted provides a economic bonus. The research speed is significant here. If you are playing the fastest research then a research bonus caused by an economic bonus would be increased of research speed. 

On this note the problem is how the difficulty levels are done. I would like a harder Ai at higher levels, but instead the game gives economic bonuses to the Ai above normal this is not broken I just disagree with how they do this. It may not be possible to have harder levels above normal. I don't know. Your answer would require a entire redesign from how everyone programs Ai. I think it can be done. It's not broken. I just suggest a different way to program the Ai from what anyone has done.

Although the game is heavily modded I don't see why an AI should be that much ahead techwise at turn 77. I see such thing in my games (always insane map, all AIs gifted, tech brokering off, but without modding tech-related values, tech speed very slow) also, it became better with 2.0, but still some AIs have unexplicably advanced tech (or warship numbers) although most of the time their planets look pretty crappy ...

What doesn't keep me from playing on usually

The modifications I made  are part of global defines.  They should be effecting all races equally.  I do not see why these should have altered my progress relative to the AI's.

The mods are the result of my dissatisfaction with the pacing options provided.  I want a slower game, and I could not mod PacingDefs.xml to adjust game pacing with these values instead of it's flat +/- %'s.  The values, other than Growth, were not enumerated for that .xml.

I'm going to do a controlled test of Tech inflation today to see if it effects the player only, or both the player and the AI.

My apologies to the author for getting this thread so far off topic, but since we're already here, here is where I'll post the results.

 

Oh for God's sake please don't! You already derailed the thread with your epic rant and now you want to continue to do so with your personal tests of your mod? Seriously? I for one (and I'm sure I'm not the only one) could care less about your mod test results. Go to the modding section and start a new thread and stop polluting this one please! This is about Crusade, not your personal mod and the issues you have with it...

Exactly. Jafo, please intervene!

Speed difference would only affect anything above normal, but my point is defeated if you are playing slowest. Awhile back someone who will remain nameless wasn't building factories and wondered why his world was undeveloped. The issue is probably something like that, or maybe the fact you don't care about adjacencies. Gifted does affect everything swith an economic bonus.

This could be very significant, many of the leaders have a global bonus 3% and a local planetary bonus of 25% in their specialized field.  I'm more interested in the local bonus.  Hopefully each time they level up the percentage amount could go up.  If they level up frequently perhaps each time you get a new leader those percentage amounts could be significant.

e.g. 3% local bonus each new leader.  After 20 leaders your first local bonus leader say a scientist would be 25 + (3 x 20) = 85%. A significant amount that would actually make specializing worlds in one area very worthwhile the bigger the bonus (e.g. science planet mostly science buildings if scientist is there) which would allay my previous fears about permanent evenly split production rendering the adjacency bonus mechanic a limited consideration since you'd want to split between factories, research and wealth near equally.  Assuming my previous assumptions have been correct in previous posts i.e. raw production/buildings haven't changed how they work and the leader bonuses take alter raw production and is e.g. not like another building.

Would be nice to get some fine detail info from dev's on how things actually work also how moddable is it? 

Noone jumped on that screenie that is showing the resource bar on top? It seems there is a "food" resource? I mean there's a small symbol looking like a green apple, what else would that be....