Thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the Community Update.

Cheers,

Alt.

If you're having RAM issues you could always dumb down video options a bit. On minimal settings in a gigantic all-abundant galaxy you can have up to 95.000 ships before the RAM limitation kicks in.

I know full well what you're intended to say, that the game cannot utulize more than +2GB RAM. And it was me who tested it out by trying to produce as many ships as possible. But no normal game will see that many ships, that means that you'll never encounter any RAM issues when playing a normal unless you are using a high gfx mod when playing zoomed in.

In other words, to patch the .exe is most likely unnecessary...

Thanks for the clarification, MabusAltarn. 

I've used APT2.0 heavily (it was how I played ToA until realizing this existed; thanks for that, too!), but I never realized there were any UI differences. I suppose adding your UI here will make it more familiar to me, heh.

Is there a place that outlines all the UI changes included in the AltarnizedUI for reference?

Hi all.

I just wanted to pop in and say i'm still playing and enjoying the final CU. (My machine can just barely run GC3, so i end up just playing GC2).

I actually lost a game the other day! I was trying to play a difficult corner position on a mostly-empty Huge galaxy and just couldn't scrape enough together to compete. The Iconians out-teched everybody and it soon became undefendable.

The game i'm playing now is also interesting. In a Gigantic galaxy with rare planets, most empires came out with at most 5 planets. Interestingly, the Korx have run away with the game and i'm trying to figure out how to out-manouvre their 5x larger military without getting noticed as their "ripe for conquest" next door neighbor.

Thanks to all y'all modders for putting this together.

Well, it's been a little over a year since this project started (and a little over 10 months since I've left it), so what's the current status? As far as I've heard the CU is finished, but what's the progress on integrating it into the game? That was the intended plan for the CU after all. So, have there been any news from Stardock? I'm primarily asking, because I want to finish up Autumn Twilight 2.0. The only thing left for me to do is to remove all the files from AT 2.0 that are identical with the ones from the CU, but I can't do that as long as the CU hasn't been integrated.

Speaking of AT 2.0, I'm not sure if any of you have been following my progress with it, but I've made same discoveries which might be interesting to include into the CU:

The Campaigns work from the Mod-folder
As we have already established, if you place the Campaigns in the folder Mods\Mod Name\Data\Campaigns then they won't work. The game simply won't read them. However, if you place them into Mods\Mod Name\Campaigns then they will. This makes it much easier to "install" the updated Campaigns, because you no longer have to place them into the core-folders. However, this also has some downsides: 1. you can't use sub-folders (all Campaign-files need to be placed into the Campaign-folder), 2. the modded Campaigns will be used whether mods are activated or not, 3. the mission-specific Conversations.xml don't seem to work from this folder. I haven't looked too far into whether the last one can be fixed without having to place the files into the core-folder, because it will be moot anyhow, once the CU has been integrated.

The 20% bonus to base approval from the Secret Police Center does work
While looking through the PlanetImprovements.xml of DA, I noticed that the Secret Police Center had the following tag "<F_AbilityFactor>0.20</F_AbilityFactor>". It was commented out for some reason. I got curious, and tested if it would work. It did, but only if the SPC is a Super Project. In other words, the advertised 20% bonus to base approval did work, yet someone at Stardock decided to replace it with a regular 20% morale bonus, making the SPC a overpriced, one-per-civ Extreme Stadium (i.e. worthless). It boggles the mind. Even more so considering that this has been the case since DL and nobody noticed it in all those years.

I also found some issues in the CU:

GC2_Conversations.xml
AI_TRIBUTE_DEMAND_RELATIONS_LOW: the Arceans have entries for all races, even though it should be human only (I don't think Lord Kona would take it kindly to be remarked of as "you humans".)

DECLARE_WAR_ON_EVIL_PLAYER: the Korath entries use the race-number 14 (Krynn) instead of the correct 13

InvTactics.xml
Tidal Disruption and Core Detonation should be changed back to BonusType 3. I originally changed them to 4, because their descriptions state that they reduce the defence of the Defenders. However, this had the effect that it made those tactics less effective, which wasn't my intent.

Mechanized Warriors no longer has a LuckFactor. Yet, all the other tactics still have it. This doesn't make any sense to me. Especially because, at least as far as I can tell, LuckFactor does have an effect on the tactics.

The description of Terror Drones has several typos, but Maiden666 already reported them.

Screens.str
[AlignmentBonuses3] and [AlignmentBonuses4] still state that the Propaganda Center increases loyalty and the Secret Police Center increases approval even though you switched them around.

DL Campaign
Mission2a_Text.xml: The first line of the Altarian entry for MISC_FIRST_CONTACT says "Shielding technology could easily turn the war in our favor, brother." The Terran leader in TotA is female, so this should be changed to either "sister" or "cousin".

Well, that's all the issues I can remember, but there might be more (there's always a typo somewhere).

Yup. Haven't heard anything in months.

Agreed.

I agree with you Marvin, and I really don't know anything about it, but how difficult (or how much work needs to go into) it would be to release this as a patch? I assume not much, someone just has to spend a few hours on it. Maybe, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm confident that the time spend by the people who created this update is much, much more...

Hey guys, a small heads-up: Stardock released GalCiv 2 and 3 on GOG.com today. Here is a link to the release thread.

I've just finished downloading and installing GalCiv 2 and had a short look at it. The game got a new executable (v2.20) which no longer requires registering with Stardock (as expected from a GOG-release). No idea what else might have been changed with this version.

Surprisingly enough, the release contains the Community Edition Guide. However, as far as I can tell, none of the actual changes from the CE are included. This makes the inclusion of the Guide rather baffling to say the least.

Gaunathor. I've send a mail to Stardock and got a very quick reply. They said the GOG edition is the CU. Can you check again please?

Just got my hands on the GOG release. So, has the update been applied correctly to the game? Do I need to fix something manually?

It's a bit strange to see the update being applied to the GOG release. Usually GOG doesn't include any gameplay altering updates/mods made by third parties. I guess Stardock has just handed over game to GOG like this.

Is there any way to revert the game back to the last official version? Don't get me wrong; I highly appreciate your work on the Community Update but I still like to be able to try the game in its original state.

Also, if you guys should release further updates those should be pushed as official updates to GOG. The inclusion of the CU wouldn't make much sense otherwise...

Edit: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/stardock_now_boarding_gogcom_3ccfe/post114 Okay. So if the content of the data folder has been put into the wrong location doesn't this mean that some of the content (all the other folders included with the update) has been applied to teh game while the core changes have not? Ugh...

Edit 2: Just did a quick comparison of the folder/files from the CU and the GOG release (other that the CU data folder). Not all files are identical, somebody should double check that.

So, anything GOG users can do to fix their game? Would like to forward that info to the GOG forums. I don't think we will see an official update earlier than next week.