qrtxian, I checked out the Altarian and Korx tech trees and I see the same thing.  I've made a few adjustments and I guess I'll see how things go for them.  In particular, once the Altarians have chosen the Good ethical alignment, it does open up a tech which gives them a Soldiering boost, and another one which grants additional Creativity.  They just haven't been categorised properly given what we know about the AI's tendency to pick certain techs.

There was one other thing that bugged me about my last game, which was the way the AI insisted on using the space-inefficient Armour Plating component on Dreadnoughts.  So I've modded it out of the ship components file, in the hopes that they will actually research Armour Theory (or Titanium Armour) sooner, or at least use the space for something more useful.

Wow.

You weren't kidding about the Iconians, qrtxian.  Ever wonder why the Iconians just never live up to their potential no matter which AI you give them?  Could it be that their research is wrecked because their unique techs were assigned what appear to be random categories?

Thanks for your work so far.  I don't want to steal your thunder, but this is too good not to mention.  Here we go:

• Interstellar Warfare: Missile?
• Medium Scale Building: Colonization?
• Beam Weapon Theory: Trade - Apparently Iconians shouldn't use lasers.
• Organic Materials: Research - hmmm. Could make sense, but obviously doesn't work.
• Organic Hulls: Ethics?!
• Self Healing Hulls: Colonization?
• Expert Engineering: Colonization?
• Interstellar Refining: PD?!
• Molecular Fabrication: Missile?!
• Industrial Replication I and II: Missile?!
• IR III: Military?
• Interstellar Bartering/Merchant Emporiums/Merchant Complexes: Logistics?!
• Advanced Mass Drivers: Beam?!  So they decide to go for mass drivers and get stymied with no more MD techs.
• Advanced Beam Weapons: Trade?!  They can't switch to beams because they get hit with 2 trade tech speed bumps.
• Advanced Missile Weapons: PD?!  aaaand, to top it off missiles get cut off by PD.  No weapon techs left unless they go for MD, then switch to beam for AMDs, then go back to MD when there are no other options.

All this is bad enough, but a number of their cultural techs are categorized as economic, so when they look to improve their economy they research yellow techs instead, only going for their econ techs if they want to increase logistics.

Now I'm really wondering what kind of monsters the Iconians could turn out to be if all this gets fixed.

Just wow.

I had no idea it was this bad. This would be a good mod, just to put out a group of fixed techtrees.

It'll take some time to play out games and see if the AI researches techs at the appropriate time.  There's always a risk that changes will hinder the AI instead of helping them.  But what I've just read about the Iconians tech tree makes me want to cry.  I noticed that they never seemed to get it together in any game, and now I know why.

Some early notes, focusing on the new techs:

Altarian/Drath: Xeno Mysticism branch is weirdly split between Research and Pure Research. Not sure how much, if any, difference that makes. Also, the mostly ignored Temples branch is Culture; it should almost certainly be Entertainment. And Divergent Evolution is Biology (its follow-up Healing Pools is Medicine), neither of which is likely to be prioritized by the AI.
 

Arceans: Xeno Geology is Research? It goes a long way towards explaining why the Arceans never research it or Weather Control.

Krynn: The Krynn religious tech branches are really, really weird:

• Interstellar Missionaries and Krynniac Conversion: Economics?
• Krynniac Disciples: Logistics?!?
• Greater Tolerance: Manufacturing?!?
• The Way: Logistics, again?
• Deeper Knowledge (on the path to Tech Victory): Biology?!?
• Master Spies: Biology? Again?!?
• Superior Espionage: Culture? Passable, maybe.

Thalan: Expert Gravity Channeling, for no discernable reason, is also a Biology tech.

Yor: I actually couldn't find anything wrong with the Yor tech tree on a cursory examination. It's possible they've just never done well enough to research many of their techs.

I saw something last night that warmed my heart - the Arceans building Weather Control Zeniths and Space Cannons on all their planets.  They even built the Cannons on approval bonus tiles when available.  Have fun invading them, with their 50% planet defense bonus.  Thanks to DeweyJohn's suggestion the Korx built the Mercenary Academy and researched Cut-Throat Competition, too.  The jury is still out on the Iconians after heavy modification.

This is pretty big for the Arceans, since Weather Control is the gateway to Extreme Colonization and Soil Enhancement.  Xeno Geology was a roadblock tech the way it was set up.  Now we know why they never get into the extreme planet game - and get left behind in my game conditions.

Fabulous.

Now I think my energy is going to have to go toward getting out the next report in the Kushana Initiative AAR, before an uprising occurs.

Edit to add: My bad, Weather Control isn't the gateway to Soil Enhancement, Xeno Geology is.

Something else of note: The race-specific techs at the beginning that cost 0 or 10 to research don't seem to appear at all if you don't pick them at the start. It may be worth making all future techs depend on having those base techs.

So what'd you change Xeno Geology's type to? I'm running a test game and so far the Arceans haven't researched it.

On the other hand, the Altarians have already researched Xeno Mysticism and are the only race I've met that have researched weapons. All in all it's still pretty early and I've only met three of nine opponents.

Well, I looked at Weather Control and saw that it was Colonization with AI value 55.  Since Xeno Geo is the gateway, I figured it made sense to make it the same - Colonization with AI value 55.  My test game is at Sep 2229 and they've researched Xeno Geo, Weather Control, and Soil Enhancement.

Beware. If you want the high AI value, you'll need to change it both in the TechTree and Arcean TechTree xmls.  TechTree has it as Research with AI value 5, while the Arcean TechTree changes the AI value to 15.  I changed the AI value in the TechTree and erased the change in the Arcean TechTree.  I haven't tested AI value 15, but it's such a cheap and important tech that the high value of 55 seems justified to me.

For Planetary Fortification, I changed it from Planetary Defense to Military.  On testing they still didn't go for it, so I bumped up the AI value from 20 to 25.  That did it.  In the same test game, by Sep 2229 they have PF, but haven't gone for Cathedrals yet.

Other than that, their research and development seem pretty good to me.  I read a comment about the Arcean speed penalty that said the Arceans were supposed to be the ultimate turtle race.  With Weather Control boosting the PQ of the planets they do manage to get and Space Cannons holding off the enemies, I can begin to understand how it was meant to work out.  Still, I modded out their speed penalty and I'm not sure if I'm ready to restore it yet.

Hey qrtxian--in a test game, I changed Xeno Geology's type to Colonization, and increased the aivalue to 50, and it was then one of the first techs the ai researched.

In general I'm getting good results from cranking up ai values to 25, 50 for race-specific techs that you want to 'force' the ai to research for its own good.

Here's a technique for deadlier Drengin: set their ai personality to 11, and increase the value of their unique manufacturing (Slave Pits, Slave Canyons, Devil's Forge, etc..) and research (pain amplifiers, adv. slaveling labs, etc... ) improvements. (because, have you ever noticed how under-developed Drengin planets are?). 

I've had my Drengin ai on these settings for a while now, and although they aren't always at the top, they are definitely no push-overs any more and have dominated once or twice even on Large maps with 8 other ai players.

Let me clarify, in the above post I'm talking about adjusting the <aivalue> parameter for manufacturing and research improvements in the Drengin tech tree, not the values in planetary_improvements.xml (although it's fun to tweak those as well).

Great minds think alike, they say.

I like your suggestion for the Drengin.  While their tech tree doesn't seem overtly broken, I have noticed that they don't do a very good job of progressing through those techs and developing their planets.  Sure helps explain why they just can't keep up in the late game, even with AI 11.

any update on this mod as I am just messing with the raceconfig giving drengin, korath personality 11.

we really need a decent race mod that fixes all the ai's. getting really sick of drengin mass building colony ships and not using them.

Korath can do fine on AI 7, especially if you give spore weapons a higher AI value. Others need a different personality.

korath on 7 u sure? will they expand and colonize with 7?

what number do u recommend personality to fix Iconian?

Also forgot to ask does this mod work on TA?

I read somewhere on the forums that changing the main default raceconfig resets all races bonus stats to nothing?

Should I just edit the custom raceconfigs that get created in Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor..  of each individual race name be a safer way to go than changing the main default raceconfig?

In my experience, while the Korath do not expand that well both they and the Yor will expand on 7, much more then the Drengin do. The main reason why Korath with their default personality can succeed is because this is where they make the most use of spore ships. Push their aggression up high, and they will be a successful rusher with a rather different strategy then most AIs.

As some of the above discussion suggests, we're increasingly suspecting that there's nothing wrong with the Iconian personality at all - it's all due to their defective tech tree. My current test game with the "fixed" Iconian tech tree is still going, but they appear to be doing much better then ever before.

The mod is only for TA, being intended to fix some of the AI issues caused by the new tech trees. Note that MartinKosh's original mod only fixes the issue with Space Weapons. So far, none of us have uploaded a fix-all tech tree mod.

I'm fairly late (6 years) into my test game. Here's a detailed report on all the races:

Terrans: Good. They built up a military, which was the only change I really made, since most of the unique Terran techs are various fleet modules the AI won't use anyway.

They're one of only two AIs to research Alliances, allowing me to finally get an ally after being Close to them (and two other races) for years. That's fairly normal, though, and normally I trade Alliances to all the AIs when I get it. This time I unwisely traded it from the first race to get it (the Yor, of all... people) and with Tech Brokering off couldn't give it away.

Altarians: Absolutely dominating the galaxy. They've researched a fair amount of their Xeno Mysticism techs and built the Dark Energy Lab. They also have many of their post-Xeno Ethics good techs. Most objectionable behavior so far has been researching every single extreme colonization tech even though extreme planets were set to "Occasional", causing them to fall behind in other areas.

Arceans: Not so good. They're pretty much a has-been now and are losing a war with the Altarians. They also took losses to the Thalans and Drath earlier. No Xeno Geology (or anything afterward), no Planetary Fortification, not even any Navigation Center techs (which they have normally). I'm prepared to assume it's more because they just haven't done well all game, though.

Yor: Looking fairly good. They had a big boost when the Korx surrendered to them. I tweaked some of the values to their manufacturing techs and they're coming along well. They have the most advanced weapons in the galaxy so far (Plasma - tech inflation strikes again). They took some damage earlier to the Altarians and a lot of ex-Korx pirates, but now they're on the rise.

Korx: Died out before I met them, so I don't know if they went for their trade techs or not. Because the war that wiped them out was a dogpile affair with 4 or 5 races, I was worried they never even built a military, but all the pirates seem to indicate they did.

Drath: Fairly strong. They're still evil, since I forgot to reset their alignment. They aren't researching the Xeno Mysticism branch, and are technologically behind. They also haven't bribed many wars. On the other hand they have a lot of planets and are doing okay.

Thalans: Looking good. They're into their various unique techs now, having grabbed some of the neutral techs after researching Xeno Ethics. They didn't go as crazy colonizing as they normally did.

Iconians: Results seem mixed. They're in a much better position then usual, thanks to the fact that they actively researched their manufacturing and economy techs. On the negative side, their weapon of choice is still Scatter Gun 2, despite being six years in, which worries me that there still might be some issue with weapons. They also are still ignoring the Organic Hull branch.

Minors: Results are a mixed bag:

The Paulos are doing well, with 4 colonies and a large military. They're at war with the Arceans and Thalans but are too far away from both for anything to happen. Hilariously, they built a Dark Energy Lab on their homeworld after one of those random events where they stole the Altarians' techs.

The Dark Yor have no military, but a fair number of colonies. For some reason they got Barren World Colonization very early - maybe the Yor traded it to them?

The Scottlingas colonized many (7-8) planets but never built a military. The Altarians conquered them.

The Jessuins also didn't build a military even though they did get Planetary Invasion. When I declared war on them, they still refused to build anything but transports (which they never even launched). I made peace when they had one planet left so as to dodge the diplomatic penalty for destroying them, and they're finally building warships now.

The Carinoids are dead, conquered by the Thalans.

I just met the Akilians. They're looking strong and aren't at war with anyone.

I still haven't met the Lentzlandians or Snathi. I've had several reports of powerful races extorting the Lentzlandians, but I've heard little from the Snathi, except for a few wonders. Presumably they're stronger.

Incidentally, I am the Torians.

Wow, I never knew everything was so messed up. Thanks for the information!

I tweaked my Iconians and ran a test game out to four years last night.  I had an epiphany and turned off tech trading and mega events, so I could see exactly what they researched on their own.  After four years my observations were:

• Scatter Gun 2 is the weapon of choice, so Scatter Gun 3 seems to be a road block.
• They never researched Xeno Comms or Universal Translator, so they never had a chance to research their econ techs.  This is why I think no tech trading is important.  They probably trade for XC and UT in a normal game, but without that they have no economy.
• They researched Interstellar Refinery fairly early on and even moved on to Molecular Fabrication near the four year mark.  However, their economy and development is fairly anemic so they are still working to build Refineries on their planets and haven't yet queued any Fabricators.
• I boosted the AI value of Organic Materials to 20 or 25 just to see. They researched that, but never moved on to Organic Hulls or Self-Healing Hulls.
• They  never researched into the Hulls branch, not even Interstellar Construction.
• They researched Space Mining I and II, a big waste given what they haven't researched.

Looks like it'll take more than just fixing up the categories to get the Iconians on the right track.  Problem is, looks like some basic techs are getting in the way.  It's either reduce basic techs or boost others, but I suspect it will become somewhat complex to get them following a reasonable research path.

What do you guys think of splitting this up - each pick a race and optimize it?  Maybe we can even come back together and package it up as a mod.  I can certainly understand if you want to play around for yourself, but it's looks like there's potential to do more than just fix the categories.  I plan to focus on the Iconians for now and maybe look at the deweyjohn's suggestions for the Drengin.  My first step, I think, is going to be drawing myself a chart of the Iconians tech tree, then including the Categories and AI values.  That way I can get a better handle on what the AI sees.

Sounds good to me. I'll take some of the similiar tech trees - Altarians/Drath, Terrans/Korx, and Torians/Krynn (they're actually pretty similiar). Most only have a few unique branches, so it shouldn't be that much work.

when your all done with the mod try uploading over at www.i-mod-productions.com/ they host a lot of gc2 mods.

Hey, everyone! I just wanted to let you guys know that I was able to get the Iconians to research Universal translators. You have to do two things. First, you change the AI value of Universal Translators and Xeno Communications to very high (I went overboard and went to 300). Next, you have to change the category from Communications to Economics. This is important, as a high AI value alone is not enough to encourage them to research it.

This is what the code looked like in my game:

        <Culture ID="Xeno Communications">
            <Category>Economics</Category>
            <Cost>100</Cost>
            <Group>None</Group>
            <Alignment>None</Alignment>
            <AIValue>300</AIValue>
            <WillingnessToTrade>90</WillingnessToTrade>
        </Culture>
        <Culture ID="UniversalTranslator">
            <Category>Economics</Category>
            <Cost>55</Cost>
            <Group>None</Group>
            <Alignment>None</Alignment>
            <AIValue>300</AIValue>
            <WillingnessToTrade>70</WillingnessToTrade>
        </Culture>

Edit: I should add that this is in the Iconian's tech file, not the default one.

Edit 2: The code I used seemed to have been from an earlier test. I've updated it with the one that actually worked.

Also, just wanted to add: in my experience, the Thalans are one of the only races that seem to have no problems. In any given game, they seem to eventually research most, if not all, their techs. They probably don't need any real work.

It might be best to have the techtrees be more like orchards, having more techs with no prerequisites.

Gone back and looked over some of my earlier games. Right now, I think I'd categorize the races as follows:

No Problems

Thalans

Terrans (with Space Weapons fix)

Yor (their race personality is another issue, but I've had no problems with their research & development of planets. Yor using personality 11 are a challenging opponent)

Easily Fixed (races whose tech tree we've fixed in this thread)

Korx

Arceans

Functional (not researching all of their techs, but a capable opponent as is)

Altarians (I've mostly fixed them, but they still aren't researching Divergent Evolution and Healing Pools)

Drath

Krynn

Torians

Broken

Iconians

Drengin (even with a different personality, as mentioned above they still need some help)

I really don't use the Korath very often at all. Anyone care to venture an opinion on them?

Edit: Also, how about starting up another thread for this - something like "Tech Tree Fix Discussion"? This doesn't really have much to do with the original Space Weapons mod anymore - I assume we're all using it or a variant at this point anyway.

2nd Edit: I just used cheat codes to take command of the Iconians and some of the other races I don't have full espionage on in my test game. The results were surprising - the Iconians aren't so bad after all. They've completed their entire economy branch; while they're still hindered by the bug that prevents Iconian econ buildings from auto-upgrading, they're building the latest kind on their new colonies. They're up to Industrial Replication II and have built several Interstellar Refineries. In fact, they're now at work at least one Molecular Fabricator and have another on their main manufacturing world. Furthermore, they have researched Scatter Blaster III - they just completed it recently and so don't have many ships with it built yet.

The main remaining issues with the Iconians seem to be:

• Still no Organic Hulls
• Still no Expert Engineering - fortunately for this time someone gave them Advanced Hulls
• They ignore Xeno Persuasion and so never have any influence technologies.

Other observations, from this and other games:

Altarians ignore their Defensive Studies tech.

The Arceans' lack of technologies in this game comes entirely or mostly down to their bad starting position. They have no research at all, having devoted everything into staving off aggression.

The Yor have a problem with some one-shot techs (nothing comes after them) like Stellar Streams. They also seem to have a hang-up at Collective Manufacturing III - not sure what it's about, but they aren't researching beyond it.

It turns out the Krynn do research their unique techs eventually. Like the Thalans and Torians, they just don't put a high priority on it.

Finally, in an embarassing note, after going through the Thalan tech tree I accidentally set the prerequisite for 4D Phasing to Admantium Armor (which is not the normal case - the Thalans tend to get this in the later game), and I didn't catch it until during the game. Proof that some of these errors can be hard to spot until too late.