The Founder's Memorial is different for the Forgotten, but i don't know if that's an entirely different building.

I've played around and been unable to reproduce the Vaulter quest issue. Maybe someone else has managed to...

Yeah the founders memorial is a diffent building for the forgotten, I guess one could do tyhe same for the altar buildings, but that should actually be possible with conventional modding, no community patch needed ;). I may still do it one day, but its not a top priority for now.

Hey everyone, here is the next iteration of my community patch (see mainpost for full changelog)! 

Downloadlink (Installer) || Downloadlink (Zip) 

The main focus in this patch was the Cultist AI. The Cultists have a very special play style, however for the most part this was not taken into account when it comes to their AI. The changes I introduced in this patch hopefully make sure, that they are better at doing what they love and are able to provide more of a challenge - especially in higher difficulties.

For the next version I have an idea for a feature that affects balance in a significant way. In short: I think tech trading is very strong, too strong in fact. Currently tech trading is a very cheap way of outteching even science focussed players for a very minor influence investment. Other players HAVE to do the same if they want to keep pace. My planned way of nerfing it would be to increase the influence cost of a tech trade depending on the number of past tech trades a player has been part of. This way players that do the occasional tech trade wont notice much of a change, but players that spam it have to invest more influence in order to do so. I'm thinking about raising the influence cost for each past tech trade by 3. Since a change like this might be controversial, I'm asking the community first. What do you think?

I'm also thinking about rebalancing some of the victory conditions. Diplomatic, Dust and Wonder Victory (which seems to be strictly superior to Quest Victory) need some toning down in my opinion, feedback is appreciated.

Just found out about this, thank you so much for putting in all this work to make EL better! Especailly the achievements no longer disabling mods!

About introducing more costs to tech trading: what would be the point, balance for multiplayer? If it's for that then it's not needed in my view, every player is free to "abuse" it equally or hoard his influence for other uses. Balance for singleplayer? I wouldn't like it because it would just be a punishment for the player, on higher difficulties you need this crutch to stay alive (or at least I do).

Rebalancing victory conditions:

- Dust. I always disable it because I consider it a fundamentally broken victory type. AI has extreme bonuses to getting it on higher difficulties, it's almost impossible for a player to counter it (large world map, many factions, whichever faction is further from you would be able to get it with you having extremely low odds of being able to send in an army to eliminate that faction). Can you fundamentally change the way it works? As in not requiring to hit X amount of Dust produce. May X amount of dust stockpiled (so that this introduces an opportunity cost for both players and humans, make it more interesting as it will actually lead you to modify your playstyle while standard Dust victory happens almost by accident because producing more Dust is always desirable and is a default goal for everyone). Alternative solution: can you make it trigger when one player has X% of all Dust production in the current game, e.g. if your faction produces 70% (or whatever) of the total Dust being produced ingame then you win?

- Diplomacy. This one is okay and Dust because players have to do something to get it, get in Alliances. For me this makes it ok compared to Dust which is total bullshit.

- Wonder: yes, it's much easier than Quest Victory but also easy to counter. Can you make AI more aggressive in trying to blitz the city where the wonder is being built? That would be a good fix.

looking forward to the next version of your patch sounds  promising...

Hi LeaderEnemyBoss, that's a really nice initiative, thank you very much for doing this. I'd like to contribute to it as I can, because I have improved the AI a bit based on ninakoru's mod. I tried to improve and fix things that bothered me. 

I just did 120 turns with your community patch and no other mods (just a palette extension mod), 8 players, large map, serious difficulty. I then watched how the AI was doing by using the enablemoddingtools command. Here's the result about the AI.

PROS:

- Whatever you did on the AI colonization task, it works very well. That's a great achievement as the vanilla task was very bad, like it was programmed to always choose the worst possible spot! In vanilla, I usually observed 2/3 or sometimes even 3/4 cities being very badly placed. Now out of 40+ AI cities, only 1 was in a corner of a region and this might not be the AI's fault as that region has a very weird shape, very long and thin so there was literally no good spot in there. The others were usually at a right spot, near anomalies and stuff like that. Very good.

- There is a Forgotten AI and is doing pretty well. I see you improved them quite a bit. In vanilla they tend to be 2 eras behind everyone at least, now they keep up the pace nicely. I also see that you improved things for Cultist AI too, I'll have to test them to see how they fare now. Good job!

CONS:

Now there are a lot of them, some even game breaking but that's absolutely NOT due to your community patch as those issues are in vanilla and were not fixed by ninakoru's mod. 

1) FIDS multiplication. This is the game breaking issue. 

As you know, you build improvements in your cities and you expand them to generate more and more FIDS. After some turns you will generate so much FIDS that you leave the AI behind, like far far behind even on Endless difficulty. It's amazing to see the AI stalling like that considering all the cost reduction cheats it has! That's because the AI is very bad at expanding its cities and building improvements. It's sad to see AI cities with 15+ population having between 1 and 3 districts. Just like it is sad that there are only Seed Storage, Empire Mint, Mill Foundry and other era 1 improvements in AI cities even after 200 turns. Even if the AI researched other FIDS improvements techs. 

Using ninakoru's new AI parameters like "AIItemMustBuild" and "AITechMustHave" I managed to find a right build and research order for the AI to follow about FIDS. Even if ninakoru did try to improve it, he didn't go far with it unfortunately so I added a lot more stuff. It usually goes like that for improvements built:

Food: Seed Storage --> Public Granary --> Fertilizer Plant or Hot Houses

Industry: Mill Foundry --> Apprenticeship Registry + Lumber Mill --> Production Line or Automated Production

Dust: Empire Mint --> Right of Way --> Dust Refinery --> Caravanserai --> Town Criers

Science: Public Library + Geomic Labs --> Alchemy Workshop --> Imperial Funding

I didn't tell the AI to research all FIDS techs, and almost none era 3 FIDS tech except dust because you have to consider the 9 techs requirements for new eras and the time it takes to build those improvements, you have to make room for other stuff. For FIDS I find it optimal for the AI to have era 1-2-4 improvements for food, industry and science and era 1-3-5 for dust plus the trade routes. On top of this I also increased a lot the AI priority to build districts. With these changes it becomes really hard to keep up the pace with the AI because its cities now generate huge amounts of FIDS. With these changes I had to decrease the difficulty of my games by 2 from endless to serious, so they are critical imo.

In the current game with the community patch after 120 turns, 90% of AI cities only have era 1 improvements. The AI FIDS income is already far behind mine (I didn't even conquer anyone and have only 7 cities!) and the gap will increase dramatically as I'm starting to build era 4 improvements. In 20 turns or so, the AI will never be able to compete with me at all and I don't consider myself an expert player. You might think of a better build order of course, but the AI has to multiply its FIDS income. In vanilla it's sadly too pathetic to keep up with the player.

2) Unlocking units.

Another major issue in vanilla. The AI almost never research new unit designs and rarely research Native District so it ends up with only 2 unit designs (3 when playing Necro) most of the time. Ninakoru tried to improve it I think but whatever he did, it clearly doesn't seem to work. In the current game with the community patch after 100 turns:

Those are just the first examples, the others: Necrophages didn't research either Proliferator or Native Disctrict, Broken Lords didn't research any new unit design or Native Disctrict... only Drakkens researched their special minor factions techs but none of their units. It's the same in vanilla most of the time and it's pretty annoying. 

So I'd say you have to use ninakoru "AITechMustHave" for the faction units and Native District. That will give each AI 5 unit designs, that's good for variety and fun. Yes it could end up with 2 infantry units or 2 flying units or whatever but it's better than only 2 sad units all the time.

3) Retrofiting

Simple but yet another major issue. The AI rarely retrofits its units. I know it does it, but the priority is very low. Now you might say "the AI must lack the resources" and you would be right to suppose that but... in fact most of the time the AI does have the resources but simply doesn't do it. In my current game all AI could retrofit all of their units in less than 5 turns, yet they don't. And I'm not saying that the AI just didn't retrofit the units after adding a simple accessory, no, I mean that the AI units have era 1 or 2 equipment when we are at era 4-5 lol! That's huge. Let's take the Forgotten as an example (but they're all like this):

The units designs are always upgraded and they're usually good thanks to ninakoru's tweaks.

But the armies and units in garrisons are way behind...

As I said it's not an issue with resources because they make more than 1k dust/turn and have all the required strategic resources. By taking control of the Forgotten I managed to retrofit all their units in 4 turns without changing the population tasks in the cities actually. You can't have era 1 equipment when you're at era 4... just no, AI, no! The issue is clearly the retrofiting priority being way too low. This has been an issue since Endless Space 1 and still is an issue in Endless Space 2. The AI always build lot of fleets/armies and then never retrofit them so yeah by the end the AI has x5 more units than the player but they're so weak they can't even scratch the player's units. Hey Amplitude, quantity over quality is almost never a good idea ^^

Sadly I don't know how to fix it.

Same with heroes by the way...

Funny enough, the AI governor heroes seem to be upgraded more often while the commander heroes are almost never upgraded. Here also I don't know how to fix it. Maybe it's bugged like the healing with dust function was before you fixed it (thanks by the way).

Anyway I hope my post is constructive and I can only encourage you to keep up the good work, especially on the AI side because it's much needed.

So first, this was an amazing Post, such indepth analysis - great! Thank you for that! Funnily enough almost all issues that you mention have already been noticed by me and I have made efforts to fix them for the upcoming patch (which will be larger than all the other until now). Adressing your Cons one by one:

1)FIDS multiplication

I have noticed that the AI in general is very bad at keeping the production queues of its cities filled in an efficient manner. This issue is especially pronounced when it comes to usage of industry stockpiles. To make things short: The AI first decides, what it wants to build in a city, then it decides where to use stockpiles. But it doesnt update its productionqueue afterwards, this leads to it typically wasting large parts of its stockpiles. I wrote a new function for the upcoming patch that checks if production queues need to be filled AGAIN, and if yes, it overrides the normal AI behavior and issues new productions, prioritizing FIDS buildings (and units if it doesnt have anything else to do). 

1+2)

Now so far I did only mild changes to their tech priorities (Increasing the likelyhood of native district research for example), but I will gladly consider integrating your changes in a patch after the upcoming one (only if you want ofcourse).

3)

Hooo boy. So basically I have conducted about the same tests as you, and came to the same conclusion. BUT the issue lies not with the AI not wanting to update their unit designs, the issue is a rather huge bug with the money account manager. It is capped out at a very low value, which basically means the AI almost always thinks it cant afford to build dust equipment, even if it sits on 40k dust.  I wrote a work around that adresses this issue for - you guessed it - the upcoming patch ;). If you still notice equpiment issues after it got released, just post here or visit our discord channel :).

Also: The healing function was never bugged, it just wasnt there at all :p.

Thank you, I'm glad you liked that little report. I'll do more after the next update, which sounds very promising.

It's true what you say about the money manager, it has to be it because I remember in one of my last campaigns the Drakkens conquered 2 other empires and had 20+ regions, plus 10+ fortresses so they had lots of strategic resources thanks to their cheats and were also sitting on 27k dust. Still their units had iron tier 3 equipment while they were already way into era 5!

I attached a file which contains my changes to tech and builing priorities:

Modified AI xml.zip

With those changes the AI will research in priority:

- Techs that are useful and usable by the AI (some FIDS buildings are not really optimised for how the AI plays, for instance it's better for the AI to use flat value bonuses like Dust Refinery instead of relying on techs that need to be on rivers or lake/sea because the AI won't use them well).

- Era 1-2-4 techs for FIS because they're always good and useful whatever the terrain, whatever the faction.

- Era 1-3-5 techs for D because of those flat values as I said.

- Resource extractors of course.

- Unlocking most units and Native District so the AI has access to 4-5 unit designs most of the time.

- Some approval techs, useful for the AI to have a few.

- Some trade routes techs.

- Most unique faction techs for immersion, variety and flavour.

- Some weapons and armour techs, the AI will take some of them for units and ships.

- Some guardians units, usually 1 or 2. In vanilla the AI rushes Skoros all the time and doesn't even know how to use it.

- Military techs that give +2 army slots and +20% defense.

- Some defense techs.

- The AI will prepare for the era 6 techs before researching them.

Of course I made sure that the AI build what it has researched ^^

I also increased the AI willingness to build districts as they are important to expand cities and FIDS income.

And I increased the AI willingness to build wonders. I found that in vanilla the AI sometimes build the National Museum and the Industry Megapole, but almost never the others or at least give plenty of time for the player to build them. Without rushing the wonders I can usually have 3-4 of them lol! Now the AI will build them and you'll have to make sacrifices if you want to build some of them, as it should be.

Maybe use those files when running a new autorun campaign and see how the AI research and build with those changes. Then you'll decide if you want to keep them in the patch :)

EDIT: on a side note I noticed, and other people have noticed this as well, that often an AI army comes near yours and doesn't do anything. You attack them and they retreat, losing 50% health, and the turn after they attack!!! They very often do this in AI vs AI wars. I think I managed to decrease the probability of this occuring by changing  Fearfulness>0.20</Fearfulness> value into -0.20 instead, in Registry.xml (at the very end of the file). What do you think?

I have no idea what fearfullness does yet, and wont take a look at it before I release the current patch (it really needs to get done ^^). I will have a deeper look at all the other stuff once I'm finished with the current release. Suffice it to say that I noticed the occasional weird AI battle engagement behavior, but so far I didnt managed to get a good save where I can actually reliably test and recreate it to make improvements.

Edit:

Also regarding Wonders: so far I only buffed the Cultists AI willingness to build them (internally in the source code), I wanted it to their "thing". Im a bit hesitant to increase the AIs willingness to build them too much, because overdoing it more or less guarantees the AI will always get them on higher difficulties.

Here we go! I've finished the newest version of the Community Patch. This time, it's a big one! Remember to join my discord channel, if you want to have a chat (Link).

But before I talk about the patch, I have to make a confession. The .exe-Installer had a stupid little (harmless) bug that lead to each patch version creating a new "instance" of the patch in the windows uninstaller menu. So if your "Apps & Features" window looks like this: I'm sorry! You can deinstall each instance and use the steam function "verify integrity of game files" to return EL to its original state. Or - if you dont mind the multiple entries - you can just ignore them, they do no harm. This patch and future versions wont have this issue anymore.

There is also the elephant in the room in form of the upcoming DLC. A new DLC means there will be further patches. For ELCP users this means: When the new official patch is released (which will take at least a month from now I assume) you may need to verify the integrity of your EL-files (at least if you want to play mp), since its possible the patch only overwrites some of the ELCP files. I will update ELCP for the new DLC once its released, it may take some days though.

This patch brings two new features with it:

A Handicap mode, that allows the host to setup handicaps for human players (intended to be used as a "skill equalizer" in multiplayer games.

Progressive Tech Trade Costs, a new option that is my attempt to make tech trades a bit less "no brainy" and a bit more interesting. With this option on, tech trades will cost more and more influence, the more often you use them. Set to "moderate" by default.

Furthermore I made some effort to balance out the different victory conditions. Currently there are three non-violent victory conditions that more or less dominate the rest: Economic, Diplomatic and Wonder. I feel confident to say, that Diplo and Wonder victories as they were, where what we professionals call "BS". The Wonder Victory was strictly better than the quest victory, and with some building cost reduction winning in two or three turns was easily possible. With my changes I intend to make the quest victory a viable alternative for players, that didnt focus too much on production/cost reduction, while the wonder victory requires the player to focus on industry now.  As for the diplomatic victory: My goal here was to make that condition less about "spam as many trades as you can in 5 turns" and more about "forge alliances to gain a steady income of diplomatic points".

I have too little experience with the economic victory condition (and therefore it only received a minor nerf), but I received feedback from multiple sides that wished for a complete overhaul of the economic victory condition. The current design basically makes no specialization necessary for the "moneyboy"-factions. They typically gain dust in ridiculous numbers, and can even use it to crank out superior armies. A redesign of the victory condition would therefore be targeted at players pursuing this condition having to "sacrifice" something in turn. My favorite idea so far is to change the condition to "the player has to have x amount of dust in storage" (so the player has to actually decide, how much dust he/she wants to use, and how much to store).

As always there are many improvements to the AI, and some bugfixes, just read the changelog in the OP for more information :).

Whether Amplitude takes inspiration in my changes or not, when the expension hits, you should verify the integrity of your files before playing. Do not combine my (then outdated) patch with the new expansion, please! :)

I will look at the code changes made by the Inferno patch and release an updated version for my mod asap, but it'll probably be a few days.