Editing major and minor races in GCII Ultimate Edition

from GalCiv2 Forums

After getting the hang of the game I'm trying to brew my ideal version of it. I've read many threads on this forum and searched everywhere online. I've tried many different tweaks, but I can't seem to figure it out myself, so I'll ask it here in the hope someone knows the answer:


1. How do I edit the AI personality for races in GCII Ultimate Edition version (on Steam).

2. How do I edit the race names and descriptions in GCII Ultimate Edition version (on Steam).

 

So far I've found many different data folders, but none of them seem to affect the races as they appear in the game. I've renamed the "Terran Alliance" into the "Test Alliance", and the "Akilians" into "Test123" in every single RaceConfig.XML file there is, to see if I could change both a major faction and a minor faction. But the game still shows the "Terran Alliance" in race selection when I start a new game, and I found the "Akilians" in a test-game with the maximum number of minor civs. I even tried deleting all of the RaceConfig files, hoping to eliminate those data files that the game didn't use, expecting the game to crash as soon as I got to the race editing screen. But no... the game still managed to get the race information from... somewhere  ...just fine! but from where?!

 

My goals is simple enough:

-Change the AI personalities of the major races to either AIP:8 or AIP:11, as I've read that 8 is good for "normal" civilizations, and 11 for "militant" civilizations. All of the other AIP's seem broken.

- Change the horrible names and descriptions of the Minor factions to something more respectable.

 

Has anyone succesfully changed these two things on Ultimate Edition?

6,857 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

You can change the AI personality within the game.  Start a game, pick your civ and get to the "Choose Opponents" screen.  Click on one of the opponents and click the "Edit" button on the bottom left of the screen.

Click the "Personality" button on the right.  The two items you're looking to change are the Ethical Alignment and Aggression.

Save the opponent and go on to the next one.

If you want to change your own setup, start a game and choose a different race, then change and save the race you intend to play as if it's an opponent.  Start a new game and choose the race you just changed and you'll have those attributes.

 

As far as changing the names, I'm not a modder, so someone else will have to come along for that one.

 

(You could also reverse-engineer it by changing a race, saving it and searching your hard drive for the newest .xml file.  That should give you the location it uses for its race descriptions.)

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Thanks, MottiKhan. That was helpful. I'm now able to at least make the Major civs more interesting to play against by manually editing them in the race selection screen into either the "human" or "generic" AI personality.

I still look for a way to change the minor race names, hopefully someone else reading this will know how to do that.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Quoting Jurremans, reply 2
I still look for a way to change the minor race names, hopefully someone else reading this will know how to do that.
End of Jurremans's quote

You'll want to mod the RaceConfig file for that. The one you're most likely to use will be wherever your computer stores its program files, under Stardock Games/Galactic Civilizations II Ultimate Edition/Twilight/Data/English.

For the record, in my experience it's actually AI 8 that's good for militant civilizations and AI 11 that's good for normal ones.