Diplomacy MODs

[ChristopherC]

Can anyone recommend a Diplomacy MOD in which other alien races aren't, in the immortal phrase of STORMHOUND, such 'back-stabbing jerks'. I am fed up with carefully cultivating a perfidious alien race only for them to... yes, you have guessed it, stab me in the back! (: Most strategy games appear to have this disfiguringly treacherous diplomacy program. EXCEPT, of course, as I always say, SMAC-X, the absolute template of space strategy games, which had a Scenario Editor, yes, it really did, one of those magical programs apparently undreamt of by the producers of Masters of Orion III, in which you could fix the diplomatic rules before the game! Who was to be a firm ally and whom an enemy and so on.... Oh, I guess what I am really asking for is a SMAC-X II for 2005/6! But I suppose one may as well ask for the moon!

Apparently, the only space stragegy game which ever featured more reliable allies was a game called 'Ascension' released some years ago now! I remember reading its booklet and the producers made a point of saying that when you make an ally, you can keep him! Ah, such gaming bliss!

Well, I have had my vent!

Live long and prosper.

[Vince278]

I've always enjoyed Ascendacy despite its flaws. Wish I could find my old CD. MOO3 diplomacy is so broken that I avoid any entangling alliances and plan around the inevitable backstab.

[ChristopherC]

Nice to hear from you again, Vince. Hope you are doing well.

I have started a thread on Diplomacy on the Atari forum and received some interesting replies.

Didn't Stormhound say that the game hadn't had the time to be tested for racial play balance before it was released? A chap on the Atari forum made an interesting suggestion that there should be an option for Allied Victory. But there isn't, so to win, you have to turn on your allies eventually. A rather nasty Hobbesian universe whereas in the real world, even the US couldn't beat Germany on its own. I like the idea of forming a grand alliance which could win in its own right.

I have said this a thousand times but I don't mind saying this again, God how this game could do with a SMAC-X type scenario editor in which, apart from anything else, you could edit the diplomatic relations! In fact, I can't think of any sort of game which shouldnt ideally have a scenario editor before it is released. SMAC-X's was particularly good but then I think that game is the very template of a great space strategy game, an absolute classic. A very significant lack in this game. There is this editor for MOO3 saved games but, as I understand it, you apparently can only use it if all the star systems are joined up. But what is the use of that, then, for it never happens until late in the game that all the systems are joined, if at all! I dunno, maybe I have got that wrong?

The one thing I didn't like about Ascendency, yes, thanks for reminding me of the name, was that you couldn't have massed space battles. For some reason, you could only have a few ships out and about. That put me off it. Incidentally, some one who replied to a notice I put on a board about it, several years ago, now, of course, said it was one of the hardest games they had ever played.

Live long and prosper, Vince.

[Vince278]

Thanks. I've been around the Civ forums but check back here occasionally. One of the things I remembered liking about Ascendency was the 3D strategic and tactical map although moving on the strategic map could be painfully tedious. Looks like there has been some good news on MOO3 about a fan based effort to correct some things. I'm playing the Dungeon Siege expansion and a game of C3C now. After that I'll probably try another game of MOO3 again.

[ChristopherC]

Hi there, Vince.

As I remember, Ascendency wasn't configured to provide you with a decent space battle involving even a little fleet of ships and that is what put me off. But I do remember distinctly reading in the booklet, I have since sold the game, how the progammers proudly stated that in their Diplomacy program your allies would remain faithful, unlike other games. The back-stabbing alien profile is apparently the norm.

I don't know why this is. Is it just very difficult to make the diplomacy more subtle, and involve lasting alliances or do the programmers play to the gallery with a Hobbesian view of the Universe, of a war of 'all against all'. I did like a suggestion on the Atari website in reply to one of my threads that it would have been nice to have the option for an Alliance win. The way the MOO3 diplomacy is configured it inevitably entails you turning on your own allies eventually or face them turning on you!

Yes, I await developments with interest. Thank goodness for the MODDERs. I think games companies now rely on them to finish and refine their games!

There was supposed possibly to be another Infogrames patch coming out this year but I have heard no more of that.

From what I gathered on the boards, my impression is that the game was too long in development and then it was a case of rush it out or abandon it!

I have Haegemonia on my HD and I would like to try Conquest sometime, when I can rid myself of the obsession of trying to win under the hoo-mans in MOO3! A difficult obsession to break! I am using a MOD to boost the hoo-mans potential but the aliens still manage to turn up unannounced with 100 plus ships wherever they damn well please and cream me! Rather dispiriting but I refuse to play any race but human. There is a Diplomacy suggestion you should give your enemy a gift and then plead for an armistice. I will give that a try but I am not hopeful.

Visually, while space games have continued to improve, as has computer processing power and 3-D cards, I don't think they have improved anything like as much conceptually or am I alone in wanting to have trustworthy allies, amongst other things, in a more subtle 'give and take' diplomacy program? Actually, I think the diplomacy in MOO2, in some respects a far simpler, smaller game, was a better program. Perhaps the majority of the players out there enjoy back-stabbing as much as the aliens? Not my style. Maybe I should give up gaming and do something useful with my life, become a member of the Peace Corps or learn Sanskrit or something?

Live long and prosper.

[Stormhound]

Actually, editing the diplomatic relations is a piece of cake. Go into the race relations file, and play around with the numbers to your heart's content. Want everybody to start happy-friendly? Make all the numbers nice positives. On edge? Negatives. Couldn't be simpler.

A scenario editor would've been nice, but there are a lot of numbers to deal with and ultimately the time wasn't there to do one. Not that I'm going to delve deeply into THAT topic...

The "all systems joined up" thing means that every system (excluding black holes and neutron stars) must be connected by a space lane. This is because the game will crash if said condition isn't met. You may not see the connections on the map, but they're all there from the start.

Oh, and SMAC-X wasn't space strategy. Sci-fi, yes, but definitely on the ground. That aside, I agree...it was a game I had a lot of fun playing.

[Bhruic]

Minor nitpick(s): Blackholes/Neutron Stars don't have to be joined to the rest of the star chain.

Also, a star can be joined by a starlane or wormhole and still be part of the chain.



Bh

[ChristopherC]

I was waiting for you to respond, Stormhound! How are you doing? Well, I hope and trust.

What you say is verrry interesting about the MOO3 editor MOD as I had the impression that all the starlanes had obviously to be joined.

No, it is simple to make the negatives positive, Stormhound, if you aren't a programmer, and I aint! Could you please elaborate on what I have to do?

I got the impression, from what I had read in the fora, that one of the leading figures in the MOO3 project had taken too long to get things off the ground and then there was a rush to get MOO3 released, so the scenario editor, along with racial play balance, fell by the wayside.

SMAC-X. Absolute template for a space strategy game, even if it didn't, I grant you, involve any fleets in space. It sported a couple of good patches, the glorious scenario editor, which included the ability to fix the diplo relations beforehand, amongst other useful things, and a good achive of MODs, courtesy of Apolyton, to realise its full potential in a way that I sooo wish had happened with MOO3! An absolute model for how a space strategy game should be completed! My all time favourite game. I would love there to be a 3-D version of this game sometime.

Live long and prosper.

[Stormhound]

You have to edit the text files, and there's one table in particular that holds the base values for race relations. (In, appropriately, racerelations.txt) If you're still gunshy about editing those manually, though, you're out of luck.

I'm doing pretty well, thanks. Still have time now and again to play a little MOO3...

[Bhruic]

Actually, the file is "BaseRelations.txt".

Bh

[ChristopherC]

Bhruic, what do I do? What do I do?

Where is BaseRelations.txt? In the Spreadsheets or somewhere else? If I find it, what do I do then?

Remember, I am hitherto not very confident about doing anything but apply patches and MODs! But I am willing to have a go with clear instructions. The Diplomacy rules are for me the bugbear of MOO3!

Live long and prosper.

[Bhruic]

Ok, first let's be clear on what you can and can't do with this file.

Can: You can change the base relationships between the species. That means you can change how a species will like another when the first meet.

Can't: You can't change how the relationship will develop over time. You won't stop a race from declaring war on you, you won't stop a race from disliking you. They may be less likely to occur, but so will wars in general (barring any you start).

Also worth noting is that every empire will have the same relationship change. So the AI will like the other AI empires with the same values that it likes you.

So with that in mind, is that what you are looking to do? If so, I can provide you with enough instruction to make those changes.

Bh

[ChristopherC]

Instructions, please, Bhruic for a non-programmer!

If you look on the Atari site, you will see my thread about Diplomacy Mods. There is a guy on there who had exactly the same problems with diplomacy which I had, which was a relief since it proved I wasn't the most incompetent player of MOO3 in the galaxy!

Live long and prosper.

[Bhruic]

Ok, the first thing to note is the .mob files. They are in the directory:
"Master of Orion 3\GameDataSets\Classic_01\GameData\Common"

You'll note 4 different files there, all having the extension ".mob". In reality, they really are zip files. So, using something like winzip or winrar, you can open those files up.

The file you are after is called "Spreadsheets.mob". Once you've opened the file up, you'll see it contains a directory called "Spreadsheets", which contains a large number of .txt files. Select the "Spreadsheets" directory and copy it to the same folder the .mob file is in.

Now, move into that directory, and you'll see all the .txt files. Before you can change them, you'll need to turn off the "read only" flag. Right click on the file, and select "properties" from the popup menu. At the bottom of the window, you'll see "Attributes", and a checkbox for "Read-only". Turn that off.

Ok, now you can edit the file(s). The one you want here is "BaseRelations.txt". It is best to edit this with a spreadsheet program like Excel. You can use a normal text editor like "Notepad", but you'll find it much harder to manage the columns.

Once you've opened BaseRelations.txt, you'll see that it contains a number of tables. The table that you want is "SpeciesBaseRel", the first table. All of the species are listed as both rows and columns. I can't remember offhand which of them is the "primary" value, but that doesn't really matter because they are all (in general) duplicated.

So let's say you want to make the Humanoids like Silicoids more (and vice versa). Right now they start with a -38 to their relations. Simply move to the appropriate cell and change the number. Negative numbers are bad, positive numbers are good. Nothing higher or lower than 200/-200.

Once you are done, save the file. Make sure that you keep it as text, and tab-delimited.

Bh

[ChristopherC]

I have just printed this in hardcopy, Bhruic, and will study it but I fear it may be a tad too complicated for me successfully to perform.

Many thanks, anyway; I will get back to you.

Live long and prosper.