The same here. Drengin, Yor, Korath have only 1/3 of the planets comparing to the good guys. Torians are the master spreaders (in all the games I played). Terrans also spread alot, Thalans as well. Arceans don't due to speed limitations.

What's happening I guess is that evil races emphasize military and don't construct colony ships, or simply don't colonize. I guess this could be a "feature" of TA, evil races concentrate more in conquering planets with goodies than expanding and constructing (which is less fun for them) which makes sense. They still give a fight though. In my games (crippling or masochist - huge) they tend to be masters in military and in fleets ... the problem is that they can have huge amount of fleets but as they lack the production and research they cannot keep up in which eventually results in only a wave of fleets that after being destroyed leave their homeworlds hopeless and ready for enemy invasion.

In DA the story was different. By then Korath was very though because they expanded alot which allied with military emphasis was quite tough to beat. Maybe too tough, and that was probably the motivation behind because by then evil races were probably too powerful and if allied almost impossible to beat at higher levels. Now I guess the game is much simpler, even in masochist and if you are playing as good alignment.

This "feature" should be balanced a bit. Evil races need to expand a bit more.

Its "official", some races don't expand in TA [1.96.027]. Stardock guys wake up, this is killing the game , at least for me. Can any one with a previous TA version see if this is a last-patch issue?

Results of Empirical Testing (pressing end-of-turn)
----------------------------
Rank of Expansion (from top to low)

1. Torians & Humans (Rabbit expansion)
2. Thalans / Drath / Krynn / Alterian (Fast expansion)
3. Iconians / Arcean / Korx (Normal expansion)
4. Korath / Drengin (Turtle expansion)
6. Yor (Sloth expansion, normally no more than half a dozen planets total in Huge)

The ratio of expansion seems to be intimately related to the race personality. Not if it is good or evil but if they are simply ... Korath, Drengin or Yor behaviour.

The only way to get Yor / Drengin / Korath to expand is to give them the "Generic" personality or other (Human, Torian).

PS: By the way, which race does the generic personality relate to? Humans? Or is it a cauldron mix of some sort?

Greenpower, what difficulties are you playing on? Because I don't observe this behavior.

I play on crippling/masochistic, common habitable planets, huge/gigantic maps. If your maps are small or normal maybe this problem goes unnoticed because there are not much planets to grab. Please confirm also if you have TA [1.96.027]

[meandean] explains it well when he first started the thread. I totally confirm his words through some tests I did, as I presented above.

I think I fixed the issue.
I deleted the entire TA profile folder (the one TA creates for temporary player preferences) at: \My Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor
I launched TA, which creates a new set of fresh folders in the same location. After that all seems ok. Yor / Drengin and Korath are expanding normally.

Let me know if this worked for you. Is this or not using the

I deleted the twilight folder in mygames and tried a few short games. Not sure about any others but unfortunately, I am still getting the same result as before. Very sorry to report this greenpower, I thought you might be on to something. Absolutely agree if you change their personality to something non-evil all seems well but of course the game is not the same because now the drengin or korath behave different from what they should. But it is playable.

I know they like to build military up first but they just do not settle any colonies after a few initial ones and really end up in a terrible situation. I also noted they like to dedicate resources very early on to build starbases when they should be going all out to settle nearby remaining colonies, like the 21 colony I found next to drengin last week well into a game. This really raised my suspicions.

Regarding using the cntl-n key, I have locked up on occasion in past so I like to reboot when I think it may be getting to that point after hitting cntl-n repeatedly to try and get a good map. This seems to avoid the lockup. I also now go into debug.err and make sure the intelligence settings have not changed as was suggested by another post. In my last few large games I have not noted anything being changed but suppose it could occur but just havent been able to confirm it. I think the cntl-n key is still viable option and can help to find a better map to play on.

I experienced this aswell...played immense,huge and gigantic galaxies with Drengin, korath and yor, along with 5 other races at masochistic and above just to test if I wasnt going nuts.I also tweaked the 3 evils races intelligence and personality...but no show..they didnt expand much and when i invaded them they were a push over..any clues??

Confirmed a while back. Was too lazy to post about it. I tend to play evil and did not expect AI to replicate my results anyway. However, they are markedly worse than before, and I would like to be able to face the Drengin someday

Interesting possible fix. Doesn't work.

I believe these AIs are simply broken. I've seen the same things as reported above: Drengin/Korath/Yor leave nice planets in their starting sector uncolonized; they build colony ships, but don't launch them; they are agressive, but it's all paper tiger.

I've seen this behavior from medium galaxies up to immense; from Tough to Masochistic; from rare to abundant planets. It's not the game settings, it's the AI.

Truly this has made playing as ANY evil race unsatisfying as you know you'll never have strong, dependable allies. Thankfully the Korx have seen a vast AI improvement since the beta. I agree that the Korath and the Drengin used to be scary neighbors. I miss those days.

  

Well, I was wondering if player trade patterns with the axis of evil could cause their
slowdown?

Maybe some player techs have a bad effect on these civs progress?

Thankx,

Prof.

 

PS what about minor race numbers?
 

Since Version 1.96, I routinely colonize planets in sectors right next to the Drengin and Yor home-worlds despite playing the Arcean tech tree with its lack of engine techs. Of the evil races, only the Korx seem to expand on any regular basis. Since version 1.96 the most planets I've seen either the Drengin or Yor actually colonize is three. The good/neutral races, on the other hand, expand like crazy. By the way, I play on immense galaxy, abundant planets, rare suns, rare habitable planets and these games since 1.96 have all been played on the "painful" difficulty level. I cannot comment on whether different settings would produce different results but I can say that the lack of expansion by the Drengin and Yor does not appear to be for lack of nearby habitable planets. I don't believe this is working as intended.

i played an immense map in cheat mode, made it so i could see the whole map, hit ctl-shift-p so that all the planets are colonizable...terran dreng korath and arch....the terrans took 1/2 the planets...3/8 was in korath and the other 1/8 was divided between the dreng and arc....i even cheated myself 1000000bc and gat all the techs for me, gave them all with the credits to the drengin but no, the only thing they did was build one or two cool ships that got wtfpwned by the terran zerg rush.....so is this going to be fixed and could a dev respond...anytime soon...i will bump this everyday T_T

Hello there...

This is a feature that exists in DA too. If you use Ctrl-N to generate a new map, you can find that one or even all of the AI races are effectively bound and gagged.

It doesn't seem to take many presses of Ctrl-N either - I'm sure it has happened to me after just 2 or 3.

So now, if ever I get dealt a starting position that I just don't want to live with, I go to 'new game' rather than Ctrl-N. Only way to be sure.

Cheers

I didn't know that you could hit crtl-N to regenerate a map, but now I'm afraid to try it T_T

I usually play on medium maps, challenging difficulty, and the Korath Clan expands like crazy, goes to war early, and generally kicks butt. The only other evil race I've played against in ToA was the Yor, and they expanded well, but I took them out early. They had 8-10 planets at the time. I'll try crtl-N on my next game and see what difference there is.

The results I've experienced as reported in this thread are not from using the Ctrl-N short cut. I don't use that "feature." I recently switched the Drengin for the Korath and the Korath seemed to do better. However, the better results for the Korath were due to conquest by spore ship and not because of colonization. That was clear when all the planets but their home system were toxic worlds. I don't believe the AI for the evil races is functioning correctly in version 1.96.

In a previous thread I reported to have "fixed" this issue. Not really. It seems not to happen in all games but definitely there is a bug in 1.96. In my recent game I found the Yor and Korath as my neighbours. They were not expanding so I took a peek. No lie, the Yor had a total of 9 Colony Ships stationed in their worlds with plenty of good planets to grab nearby, planets those that were for sure previously scouted by them. I did not used ctrl+n.

Veeery frustrating
Is it possible to rollback to a previous TA version?

Just wanted to say that I use cntl-n to gen maps and also check debug.err to make sure all races are (still) the correct intelligence. That they are not getting hosed by using cntl-n. I believe this is a good way to make sure nothing is changed inadvertantly by using cntl-n. Concerning the evil races not expanding, in my opinion this is definitely still an issue with 1.96 Hope stardock can fix this problem in the next patch?

I've spent some time trying to duplicate this, but I've not been successful (even using crtl-N, which apparently doesn't matter)

In my current game, the Yor have out-colonized me (and I'm playing Torian) and have a better economy and industrial capacity (which probably says something about my playing ability), but evil is doing well.

I've only played on Medium and smaller maps, with everything abundant except for number of planets, which is set to common. Minor Races are set to "Random", but there is usually only one present. Maybe there is another setting that is causing problems for the AI, as most of the people having problems are playing on larger maps than I am.

Try it with Huge maps and above. Assign Yor, Drengin, Korath, Terrans and Torians and start hitting that "end turn" button. Let us know how it went. By the way please check that you have 1.96 (last version).

This seems to be a 1.96 issue. As I purchased ToA on-line and didn't archived a previous version now I'm stuck with 1.96, which is the same as "broken ToA for me".

Warning: Archive your previous ToA version before updating to 1.96.

My gameplay experience of late is almost identical to RhetoricalSun's. Diff is Painful or Crippling and map sizes medium. Every race I've gone up against has played their best and colonize well. Torians are the galaxy's cockroaches. I do use ctrl-n a little and haven't noticed any gimping at all.

I'll try upping the map size but I seriously doubt its that.

bump

also they were on suicidal....did i mention that? oh well, bumpidybump

I'm having someone look into this to determine if it is in fact a bug or if it's something that Brad deliberately coded into that AI personality (which is what it sounds like to me).  If it's not a bug that we can fix, I'll have Brad look into it but he's super busy right now.

YAY finally a reply from stardock! If it is something he coded could we possiby get a button like....turning random behavior on/off ^^

ROFL. Bug or deliberate code. Gee isn't that what requirements are for? A simple one for this game is that the AIs should at least consider colonizing other planets.

I suppose if you always play tiny maps, then skipping colonizing makes sense. So I guess the ultimate fix for this would be to just have small maps; since that's what Brad codes and tests for.

Just adding another 'me too' here: I haven't played that many games yet but the slow expansion of evil races is really noticeable. (Playing 1.96.027)