Tod Jones

Reply to Missing Improvement names in GalCiv III Support GalCiv3 Forums

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Reply to Can we get a pinned topic for GC3 XML issues? in GalCiv III Support GalCiv3 Forums

Hmm, that's from the one DLC I don't have. I'd say the way drives work now doesn't make sense, where there are a couple of drive upgrades that don't increase your moves yet costs more to manufacture. I had to mod a fix to that one. Oh, and synthetics are tied to the adaptable ability even though they shouldn't be and a custom synthetic race get to colonize aquatic worlds and frozen worlds without issue regardless of their abilities. That's some more xml I had to mod. Corrosive and bacte

Reply to Oh Durantium, Where Forth Art Thou? in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote]I like to play with all settings set to abundant, [/quote] [quote]but every time a map is generated, I always find it overflowing with Antimatter but hardly has any Durantium.[/quote] Those two facts are clearly causal. Antimatter scarcity is based on the abundance of black holes. The default settings for black holes is rare, and I had to bump it up to occasional in my games just so all the anti-matter isn't all horded by one or

Reply to Couple of questions on Intrigue in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

[quote who="Rhonin_the_wizard" reply="2" id="3710363"] The Bazaar with its mercenary ships, the Arceans and the Torians. [/quote] Arceans and Torians apparently also come the Crusade expansion, so he should already have them. The only other thing that Mercenaries should have for an owner of Crusade is the discreet ability which depends on there being a mercenary market (no prebuilt race even uses Discreet anymore).

Reply to Ruling the Galaxy Takes a Massive Leap Forward with Galactic Civilizations III: Intrigue and New v3.0 in GalCiv III News GalCiv3 Forums

In space, there is no biased reporting - that's because we've hired a robot to handle it... ...Earth's Approvals Rating has skyrocketed to an impressive 100% for the last 10 weeks Huh, I think someone is fudging numbers here. Just saying. Look forward to the expansion though.

Reply to Turning off Nebula's disables Elerium resource? in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Now that I think about it some more, I think I can refactor my solution to be easier to implement. Instead of modifying the survey module, you can simply modify the definitions of carbon/silican/aquatic/synthetic life, since they count as abilities as well. Simply put the code you were going to add to survey module to the modded copies of those abilities and you should be good to go (after deleting the old definitions of course). I don't have time to test this out, but I don't see why it woul

Reply to Turning off Nebula's disables Elerium resource? in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

I just starting figuring out how to mod stuff for this game, so changing what you suggested to change is beyond my current skill level. But I do have a solution that I tested and works (incidentally now I know how I will change the resourceful ability to be more useful/interesting). Basically all you have to do is make a copy of the survey module for your mod folder. Then check out the ancient ability in the the ability definitions file, that's how you model your trigger for rewar

Reply to Need some help understanding in Galactic Civilizations III GalCiv3 Forums

Are you sure that term represents a percentage at all? The way I think how weight would work is you have an empty urn and for every event with a weight 70 you put 70 balls with a unique color into the urn. And for Assassination event you put 100 black balls into the urns. Then whenever a mega-event is called up by the game, you simply pick a ball out of the urn. That the number is 100 is just just coincidence, they could have gone with a 150 or 360 weight or whatever else they wanted, it's ju

Trade Route Raid Bonus in GalCiv III Modding GalCiv3 Forums

I was browsing the global definitions xml in the game directory and came across a TradeRouteRaidBonus tag and the value is set to .10. Does anyone know what this represents and how this works? I was trying to come up with a way to mod a pirate-like ability for a custom race, and it seems like an ability that adjusts this value might work. But I haven't played enough games to know how raiding trade routes functions in the game. Edit: I just

Reply to Liar in Game Talk GalCiv2 Forums

I guess they already used the 'weapons of mass destruction' line on the last race they conquered.

Reply to Spygate in AARs GalCiv2 Forums

Just wanted to point out that not all races get counter-espionage centers. I remember one game in particular with the Korath where I consistently had 15 to 20 spies on my planets despite pumping out counter-spies as fast as possible. This often happens on a smaller scale though with the Korath, and it just forces me to wipe out all the good races in the game just to get rid of the spies. The Altarians seem to be more passive-aggresive with their spies from my experience. I can't say I've lost a

Reply to Twilight of the Arnor Beta 4C in GalCiv Journals GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] Brad didn't give me specifics about what the minor races would be able to do, except they still can't colonize. [/quote] I've had minors colonize on me before in TA on rare occasions. With that said, it's usually on settings with a plethora of planets and never seems to be more than one extra planet. I honestly didn't even consider it a bug when it happened since I didn't realize it was suppose to be impossible for

Reply to Humanity at its Worst in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]As for drug addiction and pushers and addicts. Well I know of one "happy" place that actually got rid of them for a time. Post revolutionary China, they put all the opium addicts and other drug users and pushers against the wall and shot them. Those that dissagred with them they shot too. I guess that may be the type of world those code pink wakkos in Berkely Cal want. Not me. Funny those rough men in the marine corp waiting to do harm on there behalf allow them to sleep well at

Reply to Humanity at its Worst in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]I would make one caveat about sexual selection though...[/quote] True, in the end dumb people still have children. I'm just countering the claim that because the natural selection pressure might be reduced in modern society (which isn't even something that's even been proven btw), that the population mental abilities would necessarily devolve over time. In fact it seems likely that the initial evolution of intelligence in the first place may have had as much to do with sexual se

Reply to Resource, or Small Planet? in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

Well this partly depends on the quantity of planets in the galaxy. Assuming their isn't an overabundance of planets in the galaxy I'd go for the planet. The reason being is that the space station on the resource will be destroyed in the next war even if you don't destroy it yourself. A planet is alot harder to conquer than it is to grab a resource off of someone. A planet you can buy, but only if that race is losing a war already. And if you buy off another empire your probabl

Reply to Humanity at its Worst in Off-Topic GalCiv2 Forums

First off what people here are forgetting is that intelligence is a sexually selective trait, both directly and indirectly. Guys may want to have sex with anyone with a nice set of boobs, but who would you want to marry? If given the choice between the attractive woman who is stupid or the attractive women who is smart? Would you really want to be stuck with some dumb bimbo for the rest of your life if you could have chosen a smarter mate instead who is just as attractive? This goes dou

Reply to Negative Creativity in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Plus, how would you have a negative War Profiteering ability? It seems like it would be something that you're either good at or you're not.[/quote] Well it's probably misleading to think of it too literally as negative war profiteering. I think of it as a peaceful race that feels compelled to spend money to send peace envoys and humanitarian aid to civilizations at war. Strategically this would make for an interesting penalty, because it would force a civilization to spend some e

Reply to Thalan Influence Defeat by...Who?! in Ideas GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] Never underestimate the power of instant gratification! Doesn't the influence victory say you have to control 75% of a map to win? If you had a much smaller area than the Terrans, they probably only had to flip one or two planets to beat you. Is it 75% of a map (area) or 75% of the inhabited planets on a map? [/quote] It has to be the map area, otherwise I couldn't explain how in one game I suddenly got the extra percentage of influence

Reply to Feeding the Thalan in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

[quote]Their Soldiering ability really isn't that weak, by the way. They have one tech that gives +30 Soldiering that isn't Tradeable, after all.[/quote] Their soldier ability is by far the weakest for any race in the game. Mechanized soldiers is the only tech in the planetary invasion branch for the Thalans that gives any soldiering bonuses at all. That means that not only are they lacking all the normal soldiering bonuses that other races have from the planetary invasion tech branch a

Reply to Feeding the Thalan in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I'm going to have to correct myself here. The Gaea Vortex doesn't actually produce food, it only gives you a 10% food bonus. Which means it's useless to worlds producing 6 food a week. I certainly have to give the programmers credit for creating a balancing ethical tech tree this time, it's unfortunate that it on such an unbalanced race. The only strategy I can think of that might work with the Thalans on the settings I prefer to use (very slow tech and no tech trading) is to keep press

Reply to Feeding the Thalan in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

Honshu, you can actually get food on a third planet by researching good Xeno Ethics and building the Gaea theory galactic achievement, and you also get the Church of Valor for another 25% soldiering bonus, which probably makes good the better choice of alignment to go with when playing Thalans. Netherless, I'm just not feeling what the race's strength is suppose to be. They are super builders who have nothing to build for a long time. They can colonize quickly but then wait around while

Reply to Restoring Planet After Invasion Damage in Dark Avatar GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] i personally think that spore ships are the way to go! they're the easiest way to take out planets without losing troops. [/quote] Personally, even playing the Korath quite a bit I actually don't use spore ships very often. The reason being is that they don't leave you with any population on the planet and thus makes it highly vulnerable for a counter-attack and are often a drain on your economy as well. Sure you can bring a transport to

Reply to Feeding the Thalan in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

The Thalans were purposefully designed to not have farms. They're suppose to only have 6 billion population (except for wherever you put your galactic achievement). If they are tweaked, it will undoubtedly be by giving them some other advantage instead. Of course because they are such a weird race to play, it's hard to tell how powerful they are since any strategy you use with them is going to have to be completely different than any other race's strategy. As it is, every race does play

Reply to 1 sided scoring in Beta Reports GalCiv2 Forums

I pretty much always go for neutrality myself after picking mostly evil choices during colonization. The approval bonus, the Neutrality Learning Centers, the extra trade routes (if you go evil you usually get all but one trade route outlawed), the bonus on ground invasion against non-neutral opponents, the extra income from the temple, free terraforming for tiles, and you're usually in a better situation diplomatically than if you go evil. In my mind the only thing that makes evil that

Reply to Do you colonize uninhabitable planets? in Strategies GalCiv2 Forums

[quote] I haven't seen so many of these since I started playing TA - there seem to be fewer extreme worlds on most maps of all sizes than in DA, and far fewer of these little beauties. [/quote] I suspect that they have started giving bonus PQ to extreme planets. I base that on the fact that I found an uninhabited class 29 toxic world in one of my games under the latest Beta. If I understand this correctly, then normally planets are only suppose to go