An ability to set the frequentcy/likelihood/difficulty of tech trading would be nice - ie a slider or something.

While I would like some tech trading to be possible in the game (btween player-AI and Ai-AI) I find AI's tech trade far too frequently for my liking - forcing me to disable it entirely.

In general a 'frequency' setting that would work for both the player (each successful trade significantly increases the difficulty of further tech trades within a period of time?) and AI tech trades would be nice so that there is some trading going on, without all races ending up with the same tech.

Actually - It seems to me that what is needed is the ability for the AI to calculate relative values down that tech trading path.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the AI value tech in a sort of 'absolute' way - i.e. Phaser II is valued equally whether it's a step away, or if the AI has not researched beam weapons at all - it's either worth it to trade X for Y or it's not.

Something where the AI valued branches of technology, and multiplied that by how much research it needed to do down that branch to get to that point might spawn more 'intelligent' trading?

Or am I off on how it's done? - Jonnan

No, I think you have it right. The game places a value on each of the techs in the tree, called "willingness to trade". The lower the number, the more the AI values that tech. I haven't looked at these for some time, but IIRC, the lowest I saw was 4, and the highest was 77. Not all of these make sense to me. Sometimes the next tech in line will be valued slightly less than the one before. Also, some techs have no entry at all. The game compares it's number with your tech's number and decides whether or not it will trade. BC is given a value, as well as influence points. The Galactic Bazaar doubles up your points, as you probably know, but beyond this I can only guess.

Your ability in diplomacy, military rating, or your relations with that civ *may* have an effect. It seems to me that when I am stronger in these categories, I get better trades, but I really can't say that they do beyond a shadow of a doubt. In any case, this is a pretty simple, straightforward comparison done 'right here, right now'.

If you'd like to take a look at the numbers, they are in: C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\Twilight\Data\English\TechTrees.

That was my impression when I was looking at the xml too, but I thought I might have been missing something a more skilled player was aware of.

Jonnan

I really love having the Events tab in Civilization Manager, even though I can go many turns without checking it.

But I miss being able to filter event types like we could during the beta, and am frustrated that neither the establishment of alliances nor worlds changing alleigences are recorded.

That's simply an earlier version of the CivEventWnd.dxpack file (60421Kbs/26_09_07_@ 15:25) which got packaged "accidently" into the final distribution updates from SDC.
I solved this issue by replacing the above with the other DA version (109087Kbs/..@ 17:42) which actually HAS the necessary shortcut_Icons at the bottom.

Only problem is that when SDC will re-update TotA later on, it will reset it to the 'incomplete_flawed' version -- unless, they fix it directly from their end. So it's better to keep a copy in a folder to put it right back in.

Zyx, that makes sense for the filtering stuff, but are you sure about the tracks for alliances and culture flips? I've noticed that culture flips do not appear in the GNN, and I'm pretty sure I've never seen an alliance notice there either.

On another note...I would like for each asteroid mine to have a check box that if selected would have that mine send it's resources to the nearest colony of the same race. That would help with a lot of micromanagement that the asteroids generate without taking away from your ability to micromanage if you choose.

Another thing I would like to see (but don't expect) is being able to set the division of labor for individual planets. Have the same three sliders for military/civilian/research but they would be on the planet screen. From the screen we currently use we would set the default which would be used when the planet is first colonized or conquered. I guess again it would make sense to include a check box on the planet for it to follow planetary labor distribution or the empire's labor distribution.

Yet another...on the Colonies screen under the Civilization Manager, include (as different columns) the number of asteroids sending to the planet, the amount gained from asteroids, the amount of influence produced by the planet, and the influence ratio at the planet (clicking in that column would pop up a window giving you a break down of the influence acting on the planet).

Also under the Civilization Manager, add a tab for Starbases. It would have the following columns: Name, Location (Absolute and/or Sector), Type, Att (3 Types), Def (3 Types), Bonuses, Number of Modules Installed (Can click to see the list of installed modules), Number of Modules Uninstalled (Can click to see the list of modules waiting to be installed).

Some more...on the Ship/Planet List under the planets and starbases add the ability to sort by proximity to current selected ship. Also when you are looking at the unowned planets add a filter button. When click it would allow you to select the types (toxic, heavy, aquatic, barren, radioactive, and normal) of planets that are shown.

Now requests that have been asked for time and again... better auto explore, (if nothing else have the scout ships take in account other scout ships destinations), preferably have different routines then just right to left from the bottom of the sector to the top, then up one sector (I hate micromanaging my scouts but I have too). Auto sending colony ships and constructors to the nearest planet/starbase... With colony ships you could bring up a list of the planets with the closest at the top that you can colonize. Also have turn counter if a colonizer is already on the way over that planet in the list. For constructors it could the nearest of type (economic, military, influence, mining resource X) or the nearest needing X (where X is a selectable starbase module).

Thanks

I like the starbases screen - Another thing *I* would like with starbases is that (And maybe this is just my desire to Roleplay) I think starbases should have the 'waypoint' marker toggle-able from the starbase screen - if you're working on a starbase or need to make a fleet point, it only makes sense to me that the starbase is the place to go.

And I still would love to see Waypoints made into better management tools, just in general - Any mission you can assign a ship to do should be assignable from a waypoint - if you need a starbase guarded, or a sentry point, just set the waypoint to give that command when ships arrive.

Another thing I would like to see is a better automatic naming system? This isn't something that I actually know what I want, except that it would be nice to see something slightly more intuitive than what is there now? Waypoints tend to change a lot so the numeric system for that isn't *too* bad, but it would be nice if there were a way for the system to come up with intuitively obvious 'sectors' based on the initial setup, and set the autonaming for starbases and waypoints accordingly?

Given the vague "I'd like to see something" of the last request, I can understand why that might be difficult - but even a player preference file in the save directory (Like the ship templates) that allowed you to design names for ship classes, either a straight listing of potential names (Like stars.txt, maybe just named the same as the template, with a .txt on the end? When it runs out of names it reuses deceased ship names with a -B or II at the end?) or a set of rules and variables you could use to design an autonaming convention for bases, waypoints and ships would be rather useful.

Oh - I know a simple GUI change that would be great - the ability to keep notes, in game. The number of time's I have 'One More Turned' because I *know* I'm going to forget to do something critical when I reload is ridiculous - {G}.

Jonnan

No tech brokering option

That and only that, and I'd be happy.

Thoughts on intel gathering (Was going to post it in another thresd, then decided this would be a better spot):

Seems to me an active spy should be easy to detect, doesn't gather intel but disables an improvement - Which is of course *why* they're easy to detect - {G}. Maybe make it more difficult to detect them if there is more than one of that improvement on a planet. "Yes sir, production has gone down, but the exact cause is unclear - we think there may be Drengin sympathizers involved"

A passive spy should be hard to detect, gathers intel, and is hard to root out - "Yes sir - the new Iconian impulse drive has definite ah, design similarities to our new drives. It's virtually certain that there is industrial espionage afoot."

A counterintelligence agent either unassigned, giving a small empire wide bonus, or assigned to one of your own specific world, giving a direct, but surgical bonus.

It should be harder to detect an agent on a planet that is near revolt - people hedge their bets, if there may be a new government in a month.

Lastly - a thought upon the cost of getting agents, to balance out the factors of "Incredibly expensive to buy new agents" against "I'm getting killed by all the other empires at once" extremes:

Leave the baseline value for getting agents up, but modify the price according to the ratio (Active Agents+1)/((Population*Natural Agents per population*Approval)+1)
low population means you have a very small pool of talent,
low approval implies that talent may not want to work in the exciting field of 'getting shot at'

Assuming my formula works the way it *looks* like it should work (and the basic math should be checked - I'm shooting from the hip), it would give a mitigating factor when fighting everyone else at once without making it cheap and easy to actually *fight* everyone else at once - The size of your intelligence agency is still going to be limited by your budget and talent pool - I would set the baseline fairly low, (5% Maybe? One agent per 20 billion @ 100% approval?) and set the espionage bonus to modify that number - drop those 5% anomaly bonuses down to say 1% at most, since a smaller bonus is going to have a much larger effect on the way this scales.

Does that seem sane?

Seconed. I would liek an option to choose your home planet's look. It gets so frustrating when I'm playing as my custom race of living rocks and I get a waterlogged planet, instead of a desert-y one.

1) An option to set the maximum amount of planets that can be colonized per year (percentages of number of habitable planets or all planets). Would ofcourse be for every species.
Why? Colony rushes go too fast at higher difficulties in my opinion.

2) Ability to set starting positions. Doesn't have to be that you can set in which sector everyone starts but 'evenly spread out', 'on the edges' and 'in the middle' options would be nice.

3) Galaxy Settings:
- Star density; an option so all systems are placed in a spiral.
Would also like to have this renamed, density refers to the amount of stars, not how they are placed.

- Anomalies: 'none' option added
- Asteroids: 'none' option added

- Technology rate: 'Very slow' is in my opinion still to fast. I don't want to be done researching in 10 to 20 years. I want it to take at least 50 years so games are more interesting in the long run.

4) Abilities/Political:
- A good economy makes people happier; 10% increase to an economy should increase morale by 1%.
- Happy people make for a better economy; 10% increase to morale should increase economy by 1% and military/social/research production by 1% too (numbers are up for debate ofcourse).

5) Custom Race Appearance:
- Would like a reset button for each of the coloring options (Hull, Trim, Engine, Race and Interface).
- The values of the current color displayed.

6) Save/Load screen: It's too small and with lots of savegames it's hard to keep track of stuff. Try expanding the window and using tabs (quicksaves, autosaves, campaign saves, #, a-z)

7) Diplomacy: I want to be able to threaten others just for fun or for money or techs, etc.

8) The ability to play against more opponents.

Nice idea. This isn't the only dialog that is too crowded. For large-game players, the Rally Point list can easily get out of hand, as can ship design lists, fleet windows, etc.

I wonder how hard it would be just to make those things sizable, so if you're spoiled with desktop size you can just use it.

Another thing that I noticed in TotA;
I'm playing on a 1680x1050 resolution and the race videos in the diplomacy screen get stretched, which looks awfull.

That one feels kinda arbitrary to me - something in the way the rules are setup to slow the colony rush I could see (Maybe am disadvantage to colonizing outside your sphere of influence - colonies that far out of contact with the main empire have some disadvantages perhaps, lower Morale?), but flat percentages that institute a galactic zoning commission feels real hinky to me.

I'm a little distrustful of the economy/morale connection a)it sounds a bit too much like trying to program in a Laffer curve, and one suspects that you could get real problems at the extremes with the tax/happiness relationship already there. - {G}.

Like all the other ideas though - Jonnan`

I'd like the Eyes of the Universe super project reduced in effectiveness. In my opinion it's too good as it gives your every ship max sensor range (isn't it supposed to just add 10 or something?). After you get it you don't need to add Sensors to your ships at all.

Sensors are capped at 15, so getting +10 from Eyes along with the passive bonuses from researching all the sensor techs to get to Eyes will put you at the cap.

The only Icons are pulled off straight from the valid file, as others aren't exactly given up by the code itself - so, i doubt anything else would show up on that screen unless patched (externally by someone) or defined indirectly through an extra function provided by SD (if requested by players).

I didn't mean to imply tracking of Alliances & Culture Flips should be there either, just that the usual defaults ARE present the "corrected" dxpack file.

Ok, so the Eyes should give only like +5 to Sensors so you still would need to put Sensors to your ships, and to get the max.

A lot of good suggestions here... Nothing to which I would object. I particularly concur with an overhaul of the espionage system. I prefer the original, but maybe a combination of the older and newer methods would be interesting as well...

One additional thing: I would love to be able to invest in research simultaneously, similar to SMAC, where you could research in different categories, turn off the ones you didn't want to research, focus on one area, etc. IMO, MOO3 had one good feature (that I can recall): different "schools" you could fund with sliders that determined priorities in terms of research funding. I would rather do that than the present limit of funding only one tech at a time. (And if you wanted to fund one at a time, you still could under the system I have described).

All & each of the above begs repeating... twice and over.
Many, many times if need be with what i consider absolutely essential BOLDED.

With #5 not being that far off the entirely new Color-Picker i suggested in November last year, i should insist.

And #8, either through a true run-time indirect race-config.xml file (or context, btw) editor interactively there for us to define or by expanding the NINE or LESS limits up to a code driven feasible memory 'slack' if possible.

Plus... read reply #59 in this very thread for some more un-bolded but still important enough - to me.

Well here's hoping this reply doesn't get lost among the many given here.... and since I don't have TOA I guess I'm speaking for DA mostly.

Does anyone know if the Devs are looking at this thread at all?? lol


I would like to be able to see the AI tech trees. That is, see what has been researched by them on their tree just like I'd see for my own. The information is already available but difficult to determine without paper and pencil and a lot of screen changes. I've never taken the time to compare where I am to the AI because it would be too painful to do.


I would like to see a specific improvement to the AI. It's what i see as its worst trait and biggest short coming. That is, I want the AI to be able to know when to change or build over whats on a tile. I don't mean the auto update when a new tech is researched. Once the AI has planet that is fully developed it never goes back to change anything. If there is no room for a farm, then a farm doesn't get built. If it needs more money, a stock market will not replace an industrial sector. I think this is why i NEVER see the AI building any ethic specific one-of-a-kind structures, like the MCC. This might also go for the AI deciding what to queue up. It will wait until all structures of a certain type are updated (when a new tech makes it happen) before allowing anything else. For instance if the AI gets neutrality learning centers, all of its labs type building will start to update. If it then gets stock markets, there still wont be one built for a very long time since NLC's take forever to build. A human player, like me, will mix up the queue to get some things faster.

Captain Yar has reminded me of a couple other GUI enhancements I'd like to see.

I'm not sure how to do this based on the space in the sidebar in the colony screen, but I'd like to see more filtering/sorting options for what buildings you want to create - not old/new/all, but obsolete/state of the art/available upgrades/ manufacturing/research/agricultural/Galactic Projects/Imperial projects/Trade Goods/Planetary Projects - maybe a set of toggles so that you only see what you want to see for a given planet in the rotation, rather than the tabs there now?

By the same token, I would like to have the "Upgrade automatically" button moved to the main screen, and separated out for each specific area of upgrades - maybe combine it with the manufacturing/research/agricultural toggles so they toggled Dark-Don't show, Light Grey-Show, don't automatically upgrade, Bright-Show, upgrade automatically. - if you didn't do *anything* else, moving it to the main colony screen would make life easier, particularly in the late game where I'm upgrading stuff and do *not* want my farms to upgrade, but can't even remember the 22nd time I've gone by Kawasaki IX whether or not I left it on or off last time I looked - it's like checking to see if I've locked the door 3 times before I go to bed - {G}

Convenient sorting would be good too - Alphabetically, by cost, by maintenance, by project type, et al.

And I want a pony. A date with a woman of intellect, grace, and beauty. Or a jet-ski - {G}.

Jonnan

I hope Stardock reads these nice suggestions.