[.97] Altarian Biosphere Manipulator is still Colony Unique

  When I play with the Altarian tech tree as a custom faction, I get to use the Biosphere manipulator once on a Soil Engineering tile.  The text says multiple times, but I have never actually seen that happen.  Didn't even realize it was supposed to be more than once.

   I also get a "Universal Soil Adapter" from Habitat Improvement.

I suspect it is supposed to be multiple times. If it isn't, then I think that is an oversight for the Altarians that they never get the "upgrade all low level tiles" improvement. 

Might not be as bad if trading for techs outside of your tech tree was in (it was supposed to be, but won't make it into the the base game - time will tell if it ever makes it at all) as they could theoretically trade for the tech.  But as it stands right now, not so much.

Q:  Still broken?

Extra Q:  How would I mod my files to fix this?  I like the Altarians a lot, but this is a big galaxy gamebraker.

Problem solved:  Added the Ultra-Terraformer planetary improvement to Altarian Paradise Worlds tech.

How-To:

• Find and open your AltarianTechDefs.txt file, it is in GalcivIII / Data / Game directory
• Search the text file for "ParadiseWorlds"
• Edit the GenericName to be "EnvironmentalResequencing" instead of "ParadiseWorlds"
• Save the file
• Time to check our work!
• Launch Galciv3 and start a new game as Altarians
• Open debug console using ~ and then type in "unlock" and press enter to unlock all technologies
• Open your home planet, scroll through things to build, you should see the "Ultra-Terraformer" option and it should NOT be Colony-Unique
• Start a new game as Altarians
• Enjoy!

Well, I would just make the Biosphere Manipulator no longer Colony-Unique instead:

• Open ImprovementDefs.xml (GalCivIII\Data\Game)
• Search for BiosphereManipulator
• Remove the line <IsColonyUnique>true</IsColonyUnique>
• Save the file
• Start a new game as the Altarians

It achieves the same thing without changing the Altarian tech tree.

Instead of editing the file you should actually create a mod with the changes.

bumping this. I love the altarians and this is a huge issue late game. I don't think it's a deliberate balance choice?

Also the social matrix tech path is woefully underpowered compared to other races. that building is basically worthless IMO

I looked at this first.  Two problems:

• Making it non-unique changes it for EVERYBODY, not just the Altarians
• It is much cheaper to construct the Biosphere than the Ultra-Terraformer, so you could terraform the crap out of your planet extremely easily

Last time I tried to create a mod it didn't work.  Admittedly that's a month or so ago, but this worked nicely for me.

Only the Altarians have the Biosphere Manipulator in their tech tree, so I don't think that's an issue.

The Ultra-Terraformer can terraform more tiles, however, because it affects tiles with a lower land value than the BM.

You have it backwards. Biosphere Manipulator is an Altarian-unique improvement. Only they can build it, because only they can research the technology. What you're doing is giving the Altarians the worse version that everyone else already has instead of giving them a fixed unique improvement. So, the fix we're suggesting doesn't make everybody else like the Altarians, it's your suggested fix that makes the Altarians more like everybody else.

bump

Definetly, given the (huge) improvement cost, wording in the description, and the name of the tech, this must be a bug. I think it was intended to terraform ALL low quality tiles at once.

Talked about this in today's devstream with Paul and this MIGHT be intentional (though he might not have been sure what I was talking about).  But Paul said he might look into it and see if the problem is as bad as some of us make it out to be.

On the one hand, the Altraians do get a couple of extra bonus terraforming improvements that literally no one else gets (they get an extra Habitat level terraforming improvement for instance).  On the other hand, if the Altarians don't win early, they get screwed as the rest of the universe Ultra-Terraforms them to death.

So great early.  Much less so as the game goes on.  IMO, crippling so as Altaria simply can't keep up any longer once everyone else gets to the Age of Ascension.  It's the classic Tortoise v Hare problem.  This wouldn't be so bad if the Altarians were a crush you quickly type race like the Drengin.  But they are more of Tortoise type faction that tends to take a while to really get going.  But this design development for their planets seems to run directly counter to it.  The Altarians simply won't have the same level of planets that everyone else will when they theoretically should be hitting their stride.

+1 to wanting this fixed.

+1

I also would like to see this getting fixed soon, or eventually I will have to mod it myself, which I find is like cheating.

Ever since the culture flipping has been nerfed to oblivion it's pretty much impossible to win against tougher AI playing the Altarians because once the other factions terraform their planets to maximum in late game this creates a huge gap between the other Factions and the Altarians. The others spam improvements everywhere boosting everything and the Altarians are pretty much screwed because they can't keep up with the military upbuild (due to lacking manufacturing) and moral penalty (due to lack of space to build more moral improvements).

I mean on small galaxies and fast games this is not a huge issue, but if you play Gigantic and above and invest several dozen hours this becomes just extremely unbalanced.