[Never mind.  I'll start a new thread for this.]

u have to download it on google,,,, u get into the stardock web page,  automatic down load..

I take it back.

This game half the nine are building guns and the other half missiles.  Some are even building defenses (though they are still notoriously unwilling to actually research defense). 

I do see a couple issues. 

1) Yor want to build Charging Stalks out the wazoo.  I had to go in and delete the ridiculous ones.  After the initial stalk rush, though, they settled down. 

2) There's about nine wars going and the Drath are rolling in cash.  But they still manage their loot like Scrooge: tax rate through the roof, social spending zero, and they won't purchase anything.  (Makes me want to put them out of their grasping misery. 

3) (problem?)  Drengin declared war on neighbor Drath.  All the other Evil races attacked Drengin within a couple months, shortly joined by the neutral raced.  The Good races sat by and laughed.  Huh??

4) Thalan is knobbled.  NO production improvements for quite a while; worlds limited to 8 billion bugs; no planetary defense techs??  Was someone trying to fix a perceived problem with this tree?

Anyway, this new version is fun!  Grab it and play it!

That could be because the AIValue for the defence techs is set very low (4). I've set it to 10 in my mod, and the AI is much more willing to research defences. Though the actual behaviour still depends on the individual AI.

Building lots of Charging Stalks is exactly what the Yor should be doing. They don't have spammable econ buildings, so their tax income depends on high population.

No, that's how their tech tree was in the vanilla game too. The way I understand their design is that they start out weak, and become more powerful the longer the game takes. The Thalan have access to some of the most powerful techs in the game, making them a real beast late game. However, the AI often doesn't take full advantage of this.

4-5 per planet?  How are they supposed to keep morale up?   The stalk bonuses don't seem sufficient.

As for Econ, the Efficiency studies bonuses are huge, if the AI ever decides to research them.  Tolmekian also adds a really nice Econ improvement at ES4.  Playing Yor under Tolmekian's mod without stalk morale bonuses and lower ES econ bonuses, I never suffered unduly for lack of bucks.

Such as?  Hyperion Starbases is really nice.  Without the production base to develop anomalies, though, it seems merely a counterbalance.  (Until late, when they can quickly bring up destroyed bases.)  Mechanical Warriors?  Equivalent to two humanoid techs that they don't have, and about as expensive.  What else? 

Add:

5) Interface colors.  Iconian ships are now all but invisible against most backgrounds.  Makes me long for the Korath.  What was wrong with white?

The game runs 4 different major AI personalities - some of which handle weapon & defense-research differently.

The Terrans, for example, lock into a single weaponsbranch and will keep researching this no matter how their game developes. They will also not research any defenses, ie. they run the tactic to better their military situation through weapons only. However, if you present defenses via techtrade they are going to use them, so the existance of Minors ingame (which usually oftentimes research defenses) is of great assistance to them.

Another example, the Altarians, will look upon other civs and try to follow their weapon progression. Now if you have multiple AIs researching different strains then this AIP will juggle between the branches, which is significantly handicapping their ability to build strong attack ships, since they mostly get Tier1 weapons. However, they are going to do an own research into defenses, and will actually examine what weapons hostile factions are using, and countering these.

That might be the direct result of Yor & Korath getting a -30 diplomacy penalty as compared to the vanilla game. The Drath now simply have a more easy way to manipulate them.

If that is supposed to mean that you've deleted the Advanced Charging Stalk from their tree then perhaps it's your own fault? Because this gives +30% moral per improvement, which is significantly more than in the vanilla game. The AI builds max 4 Stalks = 120% moral, which is the same as the approach from the generic tree 3*VLCs = 120% moral. Only Torians are better in that regard (if we solely count improvements for the moment...) while many others, Drath, Drengin, Korath, Thalans are far worse.

No, I used c/s-Z to delete the nascent stalks.  I left several on a few planets to see what happened and so far so good.  But as if mid-2230 the 'bots have made no move to research Advanced.

Next time I'll let them run and see what happens.

BTW, has anyone found a way to modify Super Abilities?  The frikkin' Yor drop Influence Starbases all over the place, making navigation a RPITA.  (The very dark interface color doesn't help at all.)

As for Drath manipulation, is there a reliable way to determine whether they are the cause of war?  I presume that the "a third party paid us to do it" statement in the declaration is a pretty good indicator.  But that wasn't in the Krynn declaration (first to pile on), nor the Korx declaration (second in while still Leaning Evil).  Also, everyone immediately gave ships to Drath, most of which are still out of range.

Recently, Terran and Altarian declared war on Drath, which was a real surprise until I realized that Drath are no longer Good...

Actually, I'm glad to see that some of the old, now tired, patterns are no longer reliable.  Makes play much more interesting.

u have to download... type download update GC 2  , version 2.20...

well if my improvements would show a tendency to magically disappear I wouldn't invest into upgradeing them either 

that's easy, but you'll need to start another game then in order for it to be effective.

you need to change the <SuperAbility>-tag in RaceConfig.xml to another number, you can deduce from the other races' numbers which one you'll want to use. and, ofc, delete the old YorCollective.Raceconfigxml-file

you can't be sure if the Drath were responsible since every AI can ask other races to go to war against you - this message simply informs you that this took place and they got paid. increasing your own MMR will do a great deal in decreasing the chances that this happens. but usually it's the Drath, with them ingame you'll see a tremendous increase in these messages, as well as if you sue for peace, it might be reverted to war instantly. IIRC after 3 times making peace the AI will deny any further peacedeals so, if Drath are still ingame, it makes sometimes sense to stall peacetalks until you really desperate for it.

well I really hope that these ethical changes will be reverted since it is the Altarians which may regulate the OP state of Draths War Profiteering income. (they will throw them into their own wars and then, Profiteering doesn't work as effective).

btw I assume that the Draths are simply buying off the military from others because they may make more money which they can can spend. I've seen this behaviour alot, uber diplomacy + Profiteering and the AIs don't see a 8 week diplomacy lockout; does wonders...

That's a good point.  Might account for some of the ships, but many were gifted very soon after I paid Drengin to attack Drath -- IOW before they got any war profits. 

As for the alignment changes, I'm not against Drath as Neutral.  But somehow making the Terran Good just isn't right.  I didn't get an answer when I asked about why we need to keep the alignment count balanced.  Anyone tried it with an unbalanced count? 

On the Super Ability, that lets me change to a different SA, which may be a better solution than nothing.  I was hoping for a way to change the attributes of ab SA.  I.e. make the speed limit of Isolationist greater than 3.

One other bad tendency I noticed:  many races build Research Coordinator as the only research improvement on a planet.  (Yes, I realize that the Capitol produces a few RP.) 

On this score, there is one aspect of Tolmekian's mod that you might consider taking up.  The Super Project  and One/Planet production improvements *also* produce some of what they are boosting.  E.g. Tech Capitol produced 12 RP as well as the bonus.  Thus a lone RC wouldn't be an issue...

I think the overall intent is to equalize the distribution of misaligned faction when starting a game against random enemies. You see, the whole diplomatic system revolves around giving causes for conflict, too much stuff to go into detail now, but there's alot of things there. Otherwise it might get boring on some game if you consider how much freedom is granted for the setup. You may start an all-uncommon huge galaxy against 2 factions, and when they all share your alignment then Wars may never break out. But the function of the AI is also to kind of stress the player, otherwise it's not challenging anymore.

But it could be done easily, what matters is the overall balancing. On that note, if we include Minors, Neutral is already in favour because most Minors are neutral. You could go with only 3 evil races, perhaps Korx or Yor, but then, the remaining evil races should see some love to compensate their relative strength.

I'm afraid that's not possible. SA are hardcoded, although some can be worked on via secondairy means, ie. Drengin Dominator Corvettes can be changed, Korath Spore Module, Trade/Spy/X-Col Techs could be changed, but many other things which directly interact with game mechanics are untouchable.

I also think that Isolator is a rather weak one, personally I'd actually increase it to 2. Although it is fun to play with it esp. if you build additional MSB in order to slow down ships to 1 speed. I remember I had to do that on my first Suicidal warfighting game as it was the only way to survive.

You can actually circumvent it a bit by using Fleet War Bubbles.

I don't know his mod, and it could be done, but the only way would then be to let this improvement have the maximum output (just like the Neutrality Center is designed) otherwise it will be placed also on bonustiles and that may be suboptimal if better labs become available.

I personally like all the research-boosting improvements, because they will also enhance production that comes via focus, ie. if you play a all-fac strat, or if you have a planet with alot of base industry output then building such an improvement there may be reasonable. Although, and especially at higher difficulty levels, the AI is usually better off by adding base RP/Ind to a planet, because he gets tremendous percentage increases to RP/Ind anyway from this setting....

That's understood.  His Neutrality Learning Center is not One/Planet, provides no bonus, produces 16 RP (iirc) and is MUCH more expensive than a Discovery Sphere.  If you put your Tech Capitol on a gold tile, it may not be the most productive use of that tile in the end.  C'est la vie.

The Super Projects are generally at the normal max output; the One/Planet improvements are typically less.  For instance, Research Coords produce 6 RP (again iirc).  Manufacturing Vortex 4 (?).  You don't want them on your bonus tiles, but having one as a single is not so bad.  Interestingly, the AIs rarely plop them on bonus tiles.  I wonder if it looks at the output when deciding what to build there?

You really ought to try playing Tolmekian's mod.  It's not as polished as the CU and takes a different approach to some problems (like all food improvements are One/Planet) that the CU likely does better.  But it does a couple things better than the CU, IMO.  E.g. the production bonus improvements.  And his mods to the Minors make them more interesting, acting differently and in some cases more like little majors.  Some don't just sit there, but expand as best they can.

I have problems defeating  evil races on harder levels, their military is very strong and they spread into other planets very quiquily..

Nope, but there's actually an easy way to see how the AIs internal logic is when playing buildings - just use the planetary governor. The AI can differ between base production & production enhancing. The former will be placed on bonus-tiles. The latter not. If combined, it qualifies as base prod.

You may still find all sorts of differences on AI planetary buildups because the AI is somewhat free in his choice of what he enqueues on a planet. Via the <AI> tag in PlanetImprovements.xml you can influence him on a global scale in this choice, but 1-per-planet improvements, esp. research or production enhancing ones, will always stay quite interesting for them.

Another way to remedy this problem without interfering into bonustiles, is either

- increasing the % modifiers to make it worthwile even if low industry is available, though this may be OP on bigger planets

- decrease the buildcosts of the 1pp improvements if their bonus is low to also low levels; that way the AI may not maximize its production, but instead get this production economically cheaper.

Yes, I'll give it a try 

So I DL all 4 versions and took a look at them. I really like most of the stuff I'm seeing there, esp. new techs, and lots of details, and also the MoOII Minors.

Some stuff seems overpowered, esp. that there's alot of new GA or SuperProjects, with them and many old ones having been reduced in buildcost and granting even additional bonuses. That sort of would become an aim for me to rushbuild them and then simply overplay the AI by statoverkill. I found one instance where a smart Minor has a <speed>1</speed> tag which should be 10, but as this mod is huge I didn't cover everything or look out specifically for typos.

All his AIP are 11, and I assume that, because of this, he had to delete Annihilator from game, and Korx also lost their SA. Personally I think that AIP11 is the weakest one, they have a very erratic non-efficient way of researching weapons, and huge problems building up planets as their social slider is oftentimes kept at below 15%.

I'm also wondering if we were talking the same mod, since the farms are all spamable and ie. the RCC only holds a percentage modifier, not giving base research....?