I think that's part of their AIP. The Iconians behave the same way regarding biology techs.

In AT, I changed the Category for their economic techs to Manufacturing instead. It works much more reliably than simply increasing the AIValue.

I ran some tests with that value and the Arceans were going for Interstellar Navigation straight away, which is okay. However, they then immediately researched the other two propulsion techs, which felt like overkill. Especially because it took them more than half a year for all three techs, and that's everything they got in that time. I then tried a value of 35 which seemed to work better. The Arceans were still researching Interstellar Navigation first, but then took a small break before going for Sub-Space Drive, and a longer break before finally going for Advanced Interstellar Navigators. This gave them time to catch up on other techs. In all the tests I ran with that value, the Arceans had Sub-Space Drive within the first year and Advanced Interstellar Navigators within the second.

As far as I recall, it is.

In the vanilla game, Impulse Drive and Warp Drive are much more expensive for the Yor to research (800 and 2500, instead of 400 and 1500). That made Stellar Streams equal in cost to Impulse Drive. In the CU, the Yor use the regular cost for Impulse Drive and Warp Drive instead, while Stellar Streams still costs 800. I see two ways to fix this: we either increase the cost for Impulse and Warp Drive for the Yor as originally intended (from 300 and 1000 to 600 and 1600 maybe) and adjust Stellar Streams accordingly (from 800 to 600), or we simply reduce the cost for Stellar Streams to 300, because it's supposed to cost the same as Impulse Drive. I'm tending to the latter.

Anyway, here is the new test-version.

I made the following changes:

PlanetImprovements.xml
Starport: increased AI from 10 to 200
Navigation Center: increased AI value from 100 to 200
Food Distribution Center: reduced Cost from 200 to 60, changed TechRequirement from Xeno Farm Construction III to Xeno Farm Construction II
Robotic Farm: increased AI value from 20 to 50
Basic Stalk: increased AI value from 10 to 50
Charging Stalks: increased AI value from 10 to 50
Advanced Charging Stalks: increased AI value from 10 to 50
Fertility Clinic: increased AI value from 10 to 20
Hyperion Matrix: reduced food percentage bonus from 50% to 25%
Gaia Vortex: replaced food percentage bonus with 3 food

TechTree.xml
Interstellar Navigation: reduced Cost from 250 to 150, increased AIValue from 20 to 35
Sub-Space Drive: increased Cost from 400 to 500, increased AIValue from 10 to 35
Advanced Interstellar Navigators: increased AIValue from 20 to 35
Stellar Streams: reduced Cost from 800 to 300, increased AIValue from 10 to 20
Interstellar Bartering: changed Category from Economics to Manufacturing
Merchant Emporiums: changed Category from Economics to Manufacturing
Merchant Trade Complexes: changed Category from Economics to Manufacturing
Xeno Farm Construction II: reduced Cost from 1000 to 500

I didn't belief my eyes when the clock showed it is Sunday... these autogames really soaked me in. As of now, I'm finished and will give it some rest.

Anyway, here are the results on YOR/STALKS, together with some minor stuff I noticed en route.

YOR:
- Homeworld bad moral: Because Stalks are also viewed as farms, he can't place any on Iconia. As he has no other moral structures available, his moral there will generally so bad that the planet doesn't develop more than 10-12b ppl. Solution would be to give the Maintenance Grid a planetary moral bonus - and increase its AI to 200 (its oftentimes not even placed on Iconia!).

- Does neither research FertilAccl or Advanced Stalks before almost endgame. Yor lack economic improvements, his only chance of bettering his economy via improvements is Stalks + high pop. If "Charging Stalks" stay at <biology> it gets them also *very* soon, by that, diminishing the chance that 3 or 4 of them are placed. My very best results so far was to label the whole branch to <Culture> Cat.<Entertainment>. Yor will then wait a bit, and get Adv. Charg. Stalks around when researching Tier3 weapons. If left on farming it will wait until Technological Victory et al. In one way it makes sense to label as Entertainment because that's what is partly really is.

- In the CU they are sometimes able to build 4 Stalks while in vanilla it was only 3. This is due to the Maintenance Grid change.

- Yor (or perhaps all AIP7 for that matter?) seem to never build only-factory worlds.

- The "Manufacturing Vortex" is not often present. Responsible for this is that he gets that tech late, and most planets have no free tiles anymore. In all my tests (on challenging) its economy was quite good so he could have easily supported more production...

ARCEANS:
- They are often ignoring soil enh, habitat impr. & terraforming & extreme colonization. Instead they get more tiles from Weather Control. Nevertheless, they have less planets, thus tiles, than anyone else. Perhaps they should then try the farming route.

- I've not seen a single Space Cannon.

- Sometimes Stellar Forge isn't placed on Arcea. (methinks all these SP need a higher AI)

- Without Soil Enhancement all PQ4 will only get Starport & 2*factory.

ICONIAN:
The greatest problem is his slider setting: around 20% MP, 15% SP, the rest research. All new planets receive only 1 social production points for well over a year, until Refinerey is finished. This slows down their colonizing game considerably. Gifting him up to +50% SP doesn't change it - because of the way planetary production is calculated/truncated (12/100*15= 1,8= 1*1,5= 1,5= 1...-.-) The only way to do away with this is to make him have more BASE INDUSTRY available:

- Initial Colony industry from 12 to 14, perhaps 15. (15/100*15= 2,25= 2) at +50% social = 3. (this would help all AIP10). 
Still - Starport + Int. Refinery need 48 turns to complete (!). Without this fix the Iconians need 20 turn before they can begin constructing ships from a new planet - this is the reason why they are so weak on the colony rush. I realize that this is a major change but I'm at a loss to find any other meaningful way. As absurd as it may sound, but changing the planetary  SP from 1-->2 speeds up planetary development by 100% (it's ludicrous that such an AI was coded in the first place....)

- Interstellar Refinery cost reduction, could be added to Molecular Fabr. (wouldn't though help in getting the Starport sooner...)

--> however, it doesn't *always* happen (but mostly). Which is the reason why, sometimes, they have an exceptionally strong game, and in other cases, their gameplay just stalls, is static & completely non-competetive. In constrast, the Yor for example, can easily go to 25%-305, even 40% SP when needed, and therefore, their planets support them with much greater force.

sounds reasonable, esp. since I noticed that Iconians sometimes go for all 3 factory techs very soon - which is a bit over the top considering their facs are weak anyway, and Int. Refinery & Mol.Fabr. are strong on their own.

that's how I had them behave on my tests. my greatest gripe is when they get Planetary Conquest before Adv.Int.Navi, which, during the Colonial Rush, makes more sense. However, this might be untrue when playing a smaller map & different techspeed. I just ran a quicktest and your change does well, though.

I would actually prefer to simply change the MC back into what it originally was. That way the Yor have a proper morale improvement for all of their planets, instead of just for one planet. Though I'm not quite sure whether we should keep the pop-growth bonus or not.

I didn't have any good results with this without also greatly increasing the AIValue. Even so, the Yor often didn't even had Charging Stalks before the first wars broke out. My best results were with both techs on Biology/Biology and AIValue 10. Charging Stalks doesn't get researched immediately, but still usually somewhere in the first year. ACS relatively soon after.

Increasing the AIValue of Fertility Acceleration to 8 also makes sure that the Yor research Extended Lifetime relatively soon (sometime during the first three years). It also makes the other races with access to FA research it much earlier too, which may take them quite some time. However, I'm not too worried about that, because it will strengthen their economy.

I'm not sure what to do about this. Part of the reason behind this is that the cost of the tech has been more than tripled compared to the vanilla game, and that the AI value of the MV is less than that of the collectives. However, even if that is fixed, the Yor will still often research Manufacturing Collectives III, instead of MV, even though it costs more and has a lower AIValue.

Okay, here is the new test-version.

And the changelog:

PlanetImprovements.xml
Initial Colony: changed industry and research from 12 back to 14
Manufacturing Vortex: increased AI value from 30 to 50, changed manufacturing bonus from 30% back to 15%
Basic Stalk: changed morale bonus from 10% back to 5%
Charging Stalks: reduced morale bonus from 20% to 10%
Advanced Charging Stalks: changed morale bonus from 30% back to 20%
Space Cannon: increased AI value from 20 to 100
Maintenance Grid: changed from SP back to 1pp, increased AI value from 100 to 200, changed Cost from 80 back to 50, removed pop-growth bonus and Morale-ability bonus, re-added morale bonus of 20%

TechTree.xml
Manufacturing Vortex: changed Cost from 1750 back to 500
Charging Stalks: reduced AIValue from 15 to 10
Advanced Charging Stalks: changed Category from Farming to Biology
Fertility Acceleration: increased AIValue from 5 to 8

I know, and this is intentional. With Advanced Charging Stalks on +30% morale it's impossible for the Yor to have Iconia on anywhere near max population. The disparity between the morale bonuses on Iconia and the colonies is simply too great. Even with the changes I made it's still difficult, but at least the Yor now reach a higher population on Iconia than before.

They do have access to the Governments now, which grant them an additional bonus to the economy. However, they often don't research the techs themselves.

Even on the old costs, the Yor often ignore the more advanced Efficiency Studies techs for a long time. Changing the AIValue doesn't help much in that regard. Neither does changing the Category.

That was actually a bad move on multiple levels. Not only does it change how the Yor play, it also made their economy weaker. Splitting the econ bonus between racial ability and planetary bonus makes you more money, than having all of the bonus come from the racial ability, due to the way the game calculates tax income. In other words: 45% racial + 25% planetary > 70% racial.

The only difficult part is getting the Yor to actually build the bloody thing. I have the AI value for the Efficiency Center on 200 in AT, and the Yor only build it occasionally. Increasing the value even higher didn't seem to have any effect.

Overall, I'm not a fan of the changes to the Yor economy in the CU.

I'm using two settings, both resulted in the same outcome:

Medium map, occasional planets/habitable planets, common stars/anomalies/asteroids, no random/Mega events, 8 minor races, 4 major races (including the "player").

The second one uses abundant planets/habitable planets/stars and 6 major races (including the "player"), but is otherwise identical to the first.

15% is actually more than enough, due to all the bonuses the Yor get: a base of 20% to both Social and Military Production, 20% to Social Production from techs, 40% to Military Production from techs, and another 20% to both from the Industrialists party. That's 60% Social and 80% Military Production. Even without the bonus from Industrialists, it's still a lot. In comparison, the factory-users only get a bonus of 40% in both abilities (with the exception of the Altarians and Arceans, and the Drath in vanilla and AT). To top it all off, the Yor also have the strongest factory in the game.

Here is a small comparison between the military output of the factory-users and the Yor, using five factories:

(12 x 5 x (1 + 0.3) ) x (1 + 0.4) = (60 x 1.3) x 1.4 = 109

(13 x 5 x (1 + 0.15) ) x (1 + 0.8) = (65 x 1.15) x 1.8 = 133

And here is how much the Yor had with the MV on 30%:

(13 x 5 x (1 + 0.3) ) x (1 + 0.8) = (65 x 1.3) x 1.8 = 151

I don't see how the ACS would obsolete the MG. The MG only increases morale, which can be useful in situations where you don't want to increase food too.

Yes, they do go for Republic occasionally, but not as often as they should. In most of my tests, they were either buying the tech, or not getting it at all. However, all races seem to be reluctant to get Democracy and Federation.

I picked the number at random. It would have made no difference whether it was 2 factories or 20. I just wanted to showcase that the Yor are already powerful builders, and don't need a strong manufacturing booster. I also made a mistake when calculating the bonuses. In the CU, the Distributed Energy Matrix tech grants a 10% bonus to Social Production, and the improvement a 10% bonus to Military Production. I'm not sure whether to count the latter, because you need to build the DEM first, but the former increases the total value of Social Production to 70%.

Also, they only need to build 6 factories, not 9, before the MV has a better output. (Initial Colony (14) + 6 MC IV (6 x 13) ) x MV (0.15) =  92 x 0.15 = 13.8

Why are you counting 50% labs in this? I haven't seen the Yor build any of their planets this way. They may have some labs on some of their planets, but nowhere near 50%.

Only if the Yor use a different political party. As long as the Yor have the bonuses from Industrialists, the other races will have a hard time catching up.

The Thalan have a base ability bonus of 33% for both Social and Military Production. They get 30% to Social and 40% to Military Production from techs. That means a total amount of 63% Social and 73% Military Production. They don't have a manufacturing boosting improvement.

Social (12 x 6) x (1 + 0.63) = 72 x 1,63 = 117

Military (12 x 6) x (1 + 0.73) = 72 x 1,73 = 124

The Iconians have no base ability bonus. They get 20% to Social and 40% to Military Production from techs.

Social (16 + 10 x 4 x (1 + 0.5) ) x (1 + 0.2) = (56 x 1.5) x 1.2 = 100

Military (16 + 10 x 4 x (1 + 0.5) ) x (1 + 0.4) = (56 x 1.5) x 1.4 = 117

For the Yor it's:

Social (13 x 5 x (1 + 0.15) ) x (1 + 0.6) = (65 x 1.15) x 1.7 = 125

Military (13 x 5 x (1 + 0.15) ) x (1 + 0.8) = (65 x 1.15) x 1.8 = 133

if you count the MP bonus from the DEM: Military (13 x 5 x (1 + 0.15) ) x (1 + 0.9) = (65 x 1.15) x 1.9 = 140

Yes, and that only applies to the player. However, I'm thinking about the AI. It only builds up to four farms per planet. Without the Maintenance Grid, the AI will not be able to further increase approval, or only with great difficulty. You cannot buy or steal moral techs in the CU, and the mining starbases are limited to a total value of 20% for the Yor (30% for factory-users). This severely reduces the options available to the AI to improve approval.

Also, why would you further increase your pop-cap, if you are already unable to reach your current pop-cap due to low approval? Wouldn't it be better to only increase your approval rating?

false. the amount of available base industry is incremental to the efficiency of percentage-enhancer. I wonder how you can make such nonsense-statements when you, at the same time, work with these calculations.

to use your statement:

2*13=26*1.15 = 29 VERSUS 3*13 = 39

20*13= 260*1.15 = 299 VERSUS 21*13 = 271

and this is why Vortex is so bad, it's low percentage calls for a hefty amount of base industry.

Yes, IF you include the Initial Col. buildings - which you didn't do in your first calculation - so neither did I, or I would not have been in the position to make a valid comparison....

BTW 105 is not "better" than 105... it's equal.

I was just using as many labs as facs in that example, the other 1pp or stalks etc were not minted against this number. Perhaps they build lesser labs but then, I was already omitting any other building that might be available like Fert. Clinic, Culture, Wonders etc

Well, I wouldn't use it otherwise the comparison will become disparate. Even DEM is questionable since they almost never build it.

The Thalan also get an add. +20% SP & +20% MP from very early techs via trade from the generic tree. Yor & Iconian only +10% SP. I'm gonna include the Initial Colony as well...

Iconian: 14+16*4*10 = 70*1.5 = 105*1.3 = 136SP / 105*1.4 = 147MP

Thalan: 14+6*12 = 86*1.83 = 157SP / 86*1.93 = 165MP

Yor: 14+5*13 = 79*1.15 = 90*1.6 = 144SP / 90*1.7 = 153MP

So Thalan are better in endgame, while Yor are (slightly) better than Iconian. (and it is questionable if Yor even get DEM...)

What is more important though is early & midgame, where planets are not so well developed and lesser tiers are only available.

Iconian: 14+16+2*6 = 42*1.5 = 63*1.3 = 81SP / 63*1.4 = 88MP

Thalan: 14+4*12 = 62*1.83 = 113SP / 62*1.83 = 113MP (omitted 4D Phasing, is lategame tech)

Yor: 14+3*9 = 41*1.15 = 47*1.5 = 70SP / 47*1.6 = 75MP (omitted DEM)

Yor loose hands down.

That's beside the point.

You realize that I was asking for a boost of moral by increasing the Maintenance Grid. If anything, these alledged moral problems are caused by *your* nerf of Stalks. Just that one single planet (Iconia) has a slight better situation while the bloody rest, tens or hundreds are now -40%.

The AI builds only 3 farms per planet. Stalks were an exception, but only as long they don't have a moral improvement (I informed you previously about this)

That is, previously the AI could have up to 4 Stalks = 20mt food & 80 moral

now, he has 3 Stalks + 1 MG = 17 food & 80 moral - its moral situation IS NO DIFFERENT.

You're making a false assumption by thinking that, if pop of a planet grows high, the AI will face some stress and desperately try to accomodate the inhabitant, by either building moral improvements or lowering taxes. He does neither.

Normally as a game paces on, my approval goes high. 

From Mining Starbases (you realize Yor can mine up to 45%), so let's say I have 3 of them = +135% moral, then

TradeGoods & Wonders: +47%    Anomalies: +10%

so as time goes by, suddenly my once deep-red 16.234b planet @39% moral is suddenly 17.000b ppl @85% moral - just the problem is that now, way into the game, there is no tile free for another Stalk. So I simply build that Maintenance Grid over, so another 2-3b ppl can grow. That's why an Adv. Stalk obsoletes the Maintenance Grid - the Stalk is ultimately better. It allows more pop when the moral allows it.

That has nothing to do with the point I was trying to make.

Even without the Initial Colony it would only take 7 factories. That's still less than the 9 you claimed.

Seriously? You're now starting to criticise my bad choice of words? I have trouble putting my thoughts into words (nevermind getting my point across). It's nothing new. So why are you bringing this up now?

Why are you bringing foreign techs into this? I only used native techs for a reason: to show the strength of the individual race. Also, the Thalan can only get 10% to SP and MP from foreign techs (Xeno Industrial Theory and Galactic Warfare). Where are you getting the other 10% from?

I find it a bit odd you use factories worth 4600 tp for the Iconians, (presumably) 800 for the Thalan, and 1100 for the Yor. Granted, the Iconians usually do have Industrial Replicators by 2229, but the Yor also usually have Manufacturing Collectives III at that point (so a total cost of 2100 tp). Also, assuming you are using Industrial Adaptation I for the Thalan, they would only have a base industrial output of 54 (Manufacturing Matrix L1 only grants 10 mp, not 12).

In that case, there is no reason for me to continue this discussion. Just let me address a few more things:

The ACS provided 30% morale before the change, so it was 20mt food and 120% morale. That meant 135% morale for the colonies, and 35% morale for the homeworld.

After the change it was 17 food and 80% morale, which meant 95% morale for the colonies and 55% morale for the homeworld.

Seriously, how can you claim that the morale situation is not different? Especially when you previously said that the Yor have 40% morale less after the change? You're contradicting yourself.

I didn't say any of that.

Not in the CU, which is what we're discussing here. They are limited to three mining modules á 5%, which gives them a maximum of 20% per mining starbase. The Yor can buy or steal the factory-techs, but they can't use the starbase modules unlocked by them. The base modules are unlocked by Basic Starbase Construction, which the Yor can't get. They might be able to reach a maximum of 30% per mining starbase, by stealing the Xeno Refining techs from the Korx. However, that requires that the Korx actually research those techs, which they only rarely do.

Sorry for the lull, been having a hellish week. Still am, frankly, with half of my house nigh unusable. Still, in between the chaos I actually got a hold of a 1280x1024 monitor and got to test out the screens. Most worked perfectly. I had to modify the event screen, because some tiling and alignment functions aparently don't work as expected when defined outside the bounds of the screen. There's some testing to be done there, to nail down the particulars of said behaviour, but it's not really pertinent to the quality of the screen. The extra adjustment is actually for the better, because the container where the videos and pictures are displayed has always been stretched horizontally, including in vanilla. The modification actually compensates and makes the aspect ratio much closer to the videos' native one.

So here is EventWnd.dxpack, tested to work on any aspect ratio 5:4 and up.

The other thing I had to tweak was the trade screen. The aspect ratio change was minor. What wasn't was a number of bugs that I identified and successfully corrected. To be clear: these bugs were already in the screen, in the CU6.02 and TotA2.06 versions. One was affecting Mabus's changes (the panel and halo around the video not appearing correctly), the other was the alignment of various boxes, buttons, pictures... everything on the screen, caused by the game not carrying fractions through calculations (I discussed this bug a few pages back, but couldn't really guess how severe its effects are and on which screens). The primary culprit for the latter one would probably be DesktopX, which opts to divide before multiplying, thus magnifying any dropped fractions. Long story short, I got into the guts of the file and corrected the whole thing. As far as I can tell, every pixel is now in its proper place. In the process of editing it, I made some clerical changes, cleaned up the file, so that if required, adding back planet-trading would be very easy and painless.

Here's the new TradeWnd.dxpack, without planet-trading. No testing is required, I made sure it's all working properly, again on anything 5:4 and up. I urge you to check it out, though, and note the differences.

Lastly, just to answer my previous question in this thread, this version of InvasionWnd.dxpack is the best one to use. No changes, just the last one I had posted, but confirmed to work as intended.

To reiterate my previous assertion, all the screen changes are cosmetic and non-functional. I am firmly of the opinion that they introduce no substantial variance to any game functionality or the game's aesthetic. If you think otherwise, please kindly and clearly explain to me why that is. And if its bugs you're worried about, the only remotely possible cause of such could actually be the title screen - that new png is twice as large as the original, so memory allocation could - improbably - be a factor. Hasn't been so far, though, and none of the other changes is even close to that. Most are just re-arrangements - entirely identical from the game's PoV. Plus, whatever the hell you've been doing to the food systems and AI could very well be a bigger wildcard. I've yet to get a grasp of the monster discussion that's been going on here.

As far as I can tell, those values are working pretty well. The Arceans are taking some time off between researching all three techs, which gives them an opportunity to catch up in all the other areas.

The only question is whether it's okay to adjust the tech costs: Interstellar Navigation from 250 to 150, Sub-Space Drive from 400 to 500, and Stellar Streams from 800 to 300. It's not absolutely necessary for the Arceans. It would simply help them get Interstellar Navigation a little faster, which would help them during the colony rush. The Yor, on the other hand, really could do with the cost reduction. Stellar Streams and Impulse Drive used to cost the same for the Yor. The CU reduced the cost for Impulse Drive, but Stellar Streams remained unchanged.

That's the point of this change. The Iconians are far too quick at getting stronger manufacturing improvements, which will rapidly increase their expenses. This change slows this down a little, while also making sure that they do get their economy improvements. The result is a much stronger Iconian economy. I've been testing this for a while now, and couldn't find any downsides.

Not anymore. Well, at least I stopped working on it. The standard values of the CU aren't perfect, but they do okay for the most part.

I'd still like to know what you intend to do with Spinorial's UI changes. Do you want to include any of them, or should they be left out? What about the TitleWnd.dxpack and TitleBack.png already included in the update? Are they going to stay, or should I remove them?

Other than that, I'm done with the update.

Negative.  "Organic" is not equivalent with "organic-based".  Rather than get technical I'll cite an example: Borg are organic-based; they are not properly 'organic'. 

Now, the context may make this distinction moot, but be careful.

Huh?  Age is 14.3 Bly (roughly).  Diameter is twice radius.  "29 billion light-year diameter of the observable universe" is actually believable.  91 sounds like you're implying a disconnect from our reality, which is not good for suspension of disbelief.

Edit:  Read the justification and I understand the 91 Bly figure, but it doesn't apply.  You said "diameter of the observable universe".  Whatever the actual current radius there is nothing observable beyond the light radius.

Having used MW and tried to figure out what the point was, I agree, except with the PQ penalty.  The damn things already wipe the surface clean.  You want them to destroy the planet too?  CC nazis may not get it, but a planet is really difficult to damage.  There's no way to justify fancy soldiers having an effect anything like Core Detonation or Mass Drivers.