Sorry to hear that. I didn't have any freezing issue in my test games for the mod, so I'm not entirely sure what is going on.

Can you perhaps upload a save that can reproduce the freezing? I may be able to figure out what is causing it. Or at least rule out whether my mod is the culprit.

Hey, everyone! I'm working on a new update.

Well, it's been almost two years since the last update, and almost as long since I unintentionally dropped the game. I only returned to GalCiv 2 this June, and began working on the mod again shortly thereafter.

So, what's changed? Quite a bit. I did another pass across the whole mod, including the documentation. The result is, that Autumn Twilight is now even more like the original game. With the exception of some balance tweaks here and there, and the bug-fixes obviously.

Here are the bigger changes I made:

Technologies:

I made some changes to the layout of the tech trees again, so that they're closer to the original ones. The most important changes are:

-the Drengin use the Xeno Economics econ techs again, instead of the Black Market ones from the Korath

-the Korath use a truncated version of the Xeno Research lab techs again, instead of the Diabolical Research ones from the Drengin

-both Drengin and Korath no longer have access to the Counter Espionage tech again

-the Terran tech History of Extremes and the Torian tech History of Perseverance got combined into one tech again (gives the Torians access to the Market Center improvement again)

I also removed most of the new techs I added (Iconian Advanced Defense techs and Superior Duranthium), made the Nano Ripper weapon tech Evil-only, and the Dynamic Shielding defense tech Good-only again.

Planetary Improvements:

In the last update, I changed some CWPs to upgrade to more advanced ones, among them the Temple of Krynn. However, while I adjusted the values of the Order of Krynn, I forgot to make it an actual upgrade for the Temple of Krynn. That's fixed now. So, enjoy your OP Order of Krynn while you can...

Other than that, I changed the tech requirements of some improvements back to the original ones (e.g., Secret Police Center and Hyper Computers), and changed some SPs back to GAs (e.g., Social Matrix, Temple of Espionage, and Gaia Vortex).

I also turned the Traditional Lab and Market Center into upgrades for the Ultimate Slaveling Lab and the Malicious Bazaar respectively, due to the changes to the Drengin and Korath tech trees.

Starbase Modules:

I restored two military-assist modules, all of the culture modules, and a mining module. I also made adjustements to the module requirements of some modules (primarily culture and trade ones).

Anomalies and Events:

I added a couple new anomalies and events. They are from the Example Mod that comes with the game. It seemed like a bit of a waste not to use them, because Stardock made them and most players haven't seen them.

UP proposals:

I restored the duplicates of all working proposals again, and changed some proposals so that the AI has an easier time voting for them.

Races:

I removed all of the adjustements I made to the minor races, and made the Akilians just as pathetic as the other minors. (I've got some plans for the minor races, but more on that another time.)

Besides the above, I also restored a lot of flavour text (tech names and details, starbase module names and descriptions, etc.), fixed a few more bugs, and made a lot of balance changes.

For more details or information regarding the balance changes, please take a look at my new spreadsheet. It serves as a comparison between the original game and Autumn Twilight, and should be much easier to understand now. Even for laymen or new players. Should something still be unclear, or if you have some general questions, feel free to ask.

I've been in the testing phase for some weeks now, and don't expect any more big changes. Small ones, on the other hand, are still a possibility. Especially in order in to improve the AIs tech research. I already made some to the Arceans, so they are better at researching Xeno Geology and Weather Control.

My current estimate for a release is somewhere in the next two to six weeks. Hopefully sooner, but that depends on how much time I have to test things. I've been rather busy lately.

Well, until next time.

Edit: I just found out, that my thread on Stardock's GalCiv 2 forums has been locked. Probably because it hasn't been posted in for almost two years. Looks like I need to get creative. <_<

Hey everyone, here is a progress report on the new update.

As expected, I did a couple more changes. More than I thought I would, in fact.

To start with, here are the changes to the layout of the tech trees:

- the techs Fleet Battle Tactics and Fleet Defense have been restored, and given a 5% bonus to Weapons and Defenses respectively

- for the Altarians and Drath, Healing Pools requires Divergent Evolution again

- Xeno Biology requires Xeno Research again

- Corrupted Genetics now requires Xeno Slavery (to be consistent with Xeno Biology)

- Extreme Colonization requires Planetary Improvements (Artificial Gravity for the Drengin and Korath) again

- the Drengin no longer have access to Master Trade again

- the Iconians and Yor no longer have access to Advanced Computing again

- for the Korx, Advanced Starbase Construction got replaced with Starbase Victory Strategy again


The change to the Korx tech tree also necessitated some adjustments to the starbase modules, in order to make sure that the Korx don't lose access to some module requirements. This, ultimately, lead to several more changes:

- changed the tech requirement for Battle Stations and Drone Fighters back to Space Weapons

- changed the tech requirement for Protection Fields back to Starship Defenses

- changed the tech requirement for Repair System to Advanced Starbase Construction (to make sure that the techs provides some kind of benefit)

- restored all of the removed defense and attack-assist modules

- removed the Singularity Weapons and Subspace Weapons modules I made for the Thalan again, because they are no longer necessary

- re-balanced all defense and military-assist modules


So far, the AI is handling the tech tree changes pretty well. As far as the the changes to the starbase modules are concerned, I made sure that the modules unlocked by the Weapons and Defenses techs are within the range that the AI can't use. This means that the AI is just as good/bad at handling the modules as it was before.

I still need to update the campaigns and scenarios (yet again) to work with the new tech trees. However, I want to make sure, that I won't make any further changes to the tech trees first. There are also a few things I wasn't quite happy with, and want to test further. Like the changes to the Drengin and Korath I mentioned last time. So, a release next week is unlikely, but I'm still within my estimate.

Well, until next time.

Hey everyone, here is a small progress report for the update.

I didn't have as much time last week, so I wasn't able to do much.

However, I did manage to run some test games. From what I could tell, the AI is managing the "new" tech tree quite well. Much better than it originally did.

During the tests, I also noticed that the Korx and, to a lesser degree, Arceans are doing better now. There is still some room for improvement, and I got some ideas on how to get there. Hopefully it all works out. I miss the days when the Arceans could actually pose a threat.

All in all, I'm rather happy with how the AI handles the updated tech tree, so I began working on the scenarios and campaigns again.

The scenarios are fully updated and tested now. During the testing-phase, I noticed that the Mirror Universe scenario is bugged. Or rather, the scenario's function to change the alignment of the major races. It doesn't actually do anything. Nothing I tried to fix this helped. Quite disappointing. :-(

The campaigns have all been updated. I still need to test them, in case I missed something.

That's all for now. Until next time.

Hey everyone, here is another progress report.

All in all, I made some good progress this week. The AI is researching a little bit better , and I made some tweaks to the star-systems of the major races. Primarily to restore the original placement of the planets (with the exception of Mercury in the Sol-system).

I also finished testing the campaigns. During the process, I found a couple bugs and other issues that I missed previously, like race-relations that were set incorrectly, or a mission that lacked a Defeat condition. All of that has been fixed now. Most importantly, however, I decided to make the campaigns an optional part of the installation again.
The biggest problem with the campaigns is, that they don't work from the mod-folder. At least, not from where they are supposed to be placed. My current implementation is basically exploiting a bug in engine. However, even that has its limits: the game doesn't detect the modded dialog-files at all. The only way for the game to read them too, is to place all of the files in the Campaign-folder of the game. Which is what I did in v1 of AT. I decided to do it this way again, because it's the only way for me to fix some typos and other issues in the dialogs.
I'm not entirely sure yet, whether to make the campaigns a seperate folder in the zip-file, or a new download entirely. However, in either case, it will be completely optional. So, if you don't want to mess with the game-files, or just don't care about the campaigns, you can just ignore this part of the installation.

Well, until next time.

Thanks! I had missed your posts for I thought you prefered GalCiv3 and had abandon GC2, so I no longer play GC2 and have neither interest. So maybe I'll reinstall it for your work.

Thanks for your post and continued interest in my mod!

If you're willing / able to wait a couple more days, the new version will be released next weekend. Just in time for the holidays!

I'm still testing a few things to make sure, that they are working as well as possible before release. The ReadMe-file also still needs to be fully updated.

And, just to clarify, I don't prefer GalCiv 3. While I do think that it has improved in several areas over GalCiv 2, there are still a lot of areas where it hasn't improved or is even worse. So far, I can say that GalCiv 3 has the potential to be a great game, but it's still only that. Potential.

I also haven't abandoned GalCiv 2, nor do I intent to in the foreseeable future! More on that after v2.3 is out.

I guess, I can count this is my progress report for this week.

So, until next time.

Sure I can wait after a 2.3 version, even for a couple of months or more.
And each time we pressure a modder, a kitty dies (and the mod is postponed). :)

Hey everyone, the new version is finally out!

You can download it as usual from my dropbox link in the OP, or over on NexusMods, once GalCiv 2 gets approved as a new game. I'll add the link once I get the 'go ahead'. Hopefully everything goes okay. It's the first time I've uploaded a mod on the Nexus. Usually I just download them. <_<

Anyhow, it's been 128 months now since I've started working on Autumn Twilight. After all this time I can finally say that I'm truly DONE™. I achieved what I set out to do, and the mod is as good as it'll ever get. Still, should somebody find a fixable problem, then I'll release an update. Other than that, though, this is it.

However, this doesn't mean that I'm done modding GalCiv 2! I've still got some ideas.

As I hinted at before, I've got something planned for the minor races. Namely the resurrection of an old idea I used in v1 of Autumn Twilight: colonising minors! They'll be smarter, stronger and pose quite a threat.

There is more, but I'm not quite ready to talk about that yet.

Until then...

Happy Holidays, and have fun playing!

I really do need to start playing this game again. :)

Shame I don't have the blocks of time it deserves.

Autumn Twilight is now also available on NexusMods!

I've been trying to add the link to the OP, but it kept screwing up the Dropbox-link for some reason. No idea what's going with that. Well, putting the link in this post will have to do, until I figure something out.

Okay, I removed all of the Dropbox-links from the OP and the Nexus-link is working now.

I'll keep it like this for the moment. The Dropbox version will still be available in case something happens with the Nexus. However, going forward, the Nexus will be the main source for all my GalCiv mods.

Thanks! Now, if there was a mod to enlarge the fonts... I must play in 1366x768, for my monitor is not so big (21.5') for FullHD.

Thank you, everyone, for the downloads! It's already more than I expected, considering how old GalCiv 2 is. I hope you enjoy playing Autumn Twilight v2!

I took a little break over the holidays, but am now slowly starting to get back into modding. I already did some preliminary work for my Minor Races mod. Once I'm far enough, I'll open a new thread.

Thanks again, everyone! Until next time.