Option to disable trading of race specific techs in TA

Start the GC2TechTreeEditor.exe in the Twilight/Tools directory.
With that editor you can modify the tech tree files in Twilight/Data/English/TechTrees.

Don't forget to backup the files before you save anything

Can someone confirm or correct my assumption that an edited tech tree will get you a cheat flag in the Metaverse?

If that is indeed as I expect, I would very much appreciate a second tech trade option to disable trading of the civ-specific techs.

Among other things, I'd really like to watch what the computer players do to each other when they are prevented from homogenizing the tech environment.

Tech trading should be removed altogether as that is just an exploit vs the AI. The human player ALWAYS comes out ahead in in tech trading. So, no they don't just need to disable trading of race specific techs, but, all of them to the human player. People always complain about how easy the AI is well this is one sure fire way to make it a bit harder and stop the human players from exploiting it.

My guess is that you favor short games and military wins, or that I have a very different idea of what it means to come out ahead than you do.

I've had many long stretches in many games where I was struggling to keep my military rating adequate in the face what appeared to be a universal tech-sharing consortium that excluded me.

That eventually led me to try a series of games with tech trading off, but I don't like the compromise. It cuts out too many options, from cashless bribes to start wars to seeding Hyperion Shrinkers as part of your evil plan for late-game Uber-dreadnaughts.

Not at all I play on huge galaxies, but, yes military wins all that other stuff is romper room type of play (play nice don't hit the other children lol). I play with tech trading off and it's quite the challenge to take out all the other AI's I play against. See, I DON'T HAVE TO WIN every single game. That's the problem I see with so many other players, if they can't win they don't want to play it. So, they use every gamey exploit or mechanical exploit they can find in the game to puff up their epeen I suppose.

Not all techs can be traded/stolen. If you open up the tech tree editor, you should see the options to disable tech stealing, and tech trading for a given tech.

Here's the situation, then... (To me at least, so far through early observations)

a) As Terran-driven, I've got the Entertainement Network with a Maintenance cost of 3 for a 10% Morale boost.
The Thalan have the exclusive edge of a similar Morale (15%) asset (Planetary Adaptation_RecuperationCenter, in fact!) BUT with a Maintenance of 1 only.

As a result... Should i refuse the tech which unlocks that more efficient building in a trade deal and SPEND my way to costly happiness when i could cut that expense a full 66% less?

Complex decisions, may just be an exploit, and yet. Darn, i simply wanna WIN.

Draw your own conclusions!

Thanks for the replies, but I need to know if editing the tech tree will give you a cheat flag in the metaverse? If so, then editing the files isn't an option for me.

Psychoravin >> I'm not saying that the option to remove tech trading shouldn't still be there, just that it would be nice if one could disable trading of race specific techs, without having to edit the files.

Me, too. Modders? Kryo?

PLEASE implent the option to enable/disable the trade of rece-techs in the normal window. I think it would be very interesting and should be accesable by everyone, not just by people who can mod. And it's important too that it's playable in the metaverse if editing the tech files would give a cheat flag and I thin it would.

Good luck, I've been barking up this tree for about five months now. Frogboy told me to get bent.

Simply said, NOBODY can cheat in the Metaverse context - and, i believe, there are mutiple code gizmos to thoroughly monitor these issues. Which makes a whole bunch of sense.
SandBox mode is a lot different, anything is possible IF these corrections are made in the perspective of a local human player needs; hard-coding this or that and what else right into a compiled version should take anyone and/or everyone many things; a hammer, a fully loaded plasma rifle, a solid academic degree in high-level languages, skills in programming very much beyond the 'usual_casual' persons, proofs of design compatibility, hypnotic competence to draw SD staff attention towards specific coding tricks, and - so - on.

Otherwise, you're welcomed to try coding your own better Galactic 4X game with some features such as requested above - but, i seriously would wish you tons of luck - maybe more!

Oh, and before i DO forget - there is an optional choice which would be kinda useful; a way to simply give every opponents a common tech-tree (everybody's a Yor!) by ticking a box right before a game starts. I can perceive some balancing problems and also understand the weird effects this may cause, btw.

Equal turf, no hassle about technos exclusivity jealousy, straight duel, fight.
Just for fun.

It looks like English, but I have no idea what the fuck you just said.

LOL...I was just thinking the exact same thing

Morten

Why is it so hard to get a credible answer to such an apparently simple question as "do edited tech trees trigger the Metaverse cheat flag?" Is there something us non-modders are just not getting? Are there separate tech trees for games you start via the Metaverse that can't be edited?

p.s. To Zyx: where did you get the idea no one can cheat in the Metaverse? I've seen plenty of cheat flags on some folks' profiles.

I think it's ironic that people worry about 'cheating' in the Metaverse, when the entire point of the metaverse is to exploit, abuse, and cheat as much as you can get away with.

No, you can't use a custom tech tree with the metaverse. Unsure why people care about the Metaverse in the first place though....

As with anything that has a copy in the MetaverseData folder, it will.

Rule of thumb: If it's not in that folder, you can mod it for metaverse games. If it is, you can't. The only exception that comes to mind right offhand are the custom race files (which are just overrides for one of the files in the MetaverseData folder).



Weekend, perhaps?

Then, kryo, don't tell anyone that you were at work yesterday. That would only stir up more troubles

*Asmodean runs away before kryo can hit him*

I've always simply 'presumed' the whole reasoning behind the Metaverse is to keep a database of best scorers to compare against.
Now, if anyone looses hours of sleep or quality gameplay time with only a WAY to devilishly screw the system and log a fantastically impossible score to stick their tung out to the commmunity of honest gamers, i've got no sympathy for them - at all.

Thus, my hard-to-grasp (possibly) NO_ONE_CAN_CHEAT abstract notion.

Yup, and from ME too - hit the pedal to the metal.

I also want the "Disable trading of race specific techs" option. Deludes the uniqueness of the races as previously said.

It kinda ruins the mood when you're Yor and the UP decides that every empire should donate 3 techs to everyone else. In a 9 AI game. After being 27 techs richer, my robots can up the population limit with regular farmed food, they're able to increase their research by feeling pain, are amused by television and they build temples of Krynn.

If I'd been a better beta volunteer, I could have put my earlier complaints this well. nimbers really captures how wrong it is to talk about "unique tech trees" with the current trading parameters. At best we have "initially unique tech trees" or "potentially unique" ones.

My favorite idea was mine own for draconian tech-trading limitations:

If the tech isn't in your tech tree, you can't have it. End of story.

Maybe a little heavy-handed for some people's tastes, but frankly it eliminates 100% of the problems. The thing is, unique tech trading isn't the ONLY problem. Trading mundane technologies can utterly break the game.

For example - Torians don't get research labs, and instead rely on +% Research to advance. To that end, Discovery Spheres are NOT a unique tech, as nearly every race gets them. However, Torians getting Discovery Spheres, on TOP of their +% research bonus, go from the worst teching race in the game to the BEST. This is fundamentally broken. Being unable to get Discovery Spheres, as the technology isn't in their tech tree, fixes this hole.

Likewise, Drengin will be unable to use anything except their own racial method of industry, as it keeps with the lore as well. If using slaves has worked for the Drengin for thousands of years, and it's clearly superior to using factories (lore-wise), why would they suddenly start building Industrial Sectors and get rid of their slaves? Yeah, I don't think so either.

How about Yor with food? Again, same thing. Trading a non-unique tech to a race that was never meant to have it.

Frankly I don't see how anyone could shoot that idea down. It might sound like too much, but remember that for almost every race, around 95% of their technologies will be able to be traded! Most tech trees share all the same technologies, especially everything in regards to starships. In addition, it supports more flexible dynamics in racial relations. The Drengin and the Korath will make natural trading buddies, helping each other along, as they share all the same techs. The Drath and Altarians will grudgingly be able to share some discoveries, and the Yor and Thalans, who will be the worst-off, are loner races anyway, so it's justified.

And then, races like the Torians and Drengin will find it difficult to trade a lot between them both due to dissimilar tech trees.

Honestly now.