While I appreciate Stardock's intent incorporating the CEP like they did...well it was a flop as far as I am concerned. This mod from Gaunathor is true to the original game plus all the right tweaks and fixes the original game needed.
Thank you for this mod! Endorsed and looking forward to re-playing this great game now. (o^_^)b PS. What did you change in your versions of the campaigns? Also how do you rank the three campaigns?
I didn't do much with the campaigns. Mostly updating them to work with the new tech trees. The biggest change is restoring the Altarian outpost in the mission Pathfinder of the Dread Lords campaign. They weren't mentioned in the briefing for the mission, and so got removed in the Community Update. I restored them mostly because the mission is hard enough as it is, fighting alone against the Dread Lords and several Yor outposts.
My rating for the campaigns is pretty simple:
Dread Lords: 3rd place. It provides some decent background info for some of the races, and the reveal of the Dread Lords is just awesome in my opinion. Gameplay-wise it doesn't have much to offer. It's mostly the same few mission-types on repeat. Which is a problem with the campaigns in general. The uneven difficulty doesn't help matters. At least it got one feature, that the other campaigns don't have: alternate missions. If you lose specific missions, you can choose to play a different one, instead of retrying the same one again.
Dark Avatar: 2nd place. Playing the Drengin is a nice change of pace, but the campaign doesn't really do much with that fact. Still, seeing the slow corruption of the Korath across the first few missions, ending in the return of the Dread Lords, and the beginning of the civil war, was pretty good. The "extermination" of the Drath felt a bit rushed. The end of the Korx, on the other hand, was handled much better. Plus, having you escort the last survivors to safety makes the re-appearance of the Korx in GalCiv 3 less jarring than the sudden return of the Drath. We got two new mission types: espionage and escort (rather reach certain coordinates). The difficulty is less uneven, and the missions overall seem better crafted. It's a decent improvement over DL.
Twilight of the Arnor: 1st place. I'm a lore-nut, so getting more info on the Precursors and the Dread Lords is just fantastic. Starting with Precursor-ships makes the missions a bit easier. However, their upkeep is pretty hard on your economy. So, there is a tradeoff in using (or not using) them. The setup of the missions got better, once again. The overall difficulty is pretty even, thanks to the aforementioned Precursor-ships. However, the missions are still limited by what you can do in a straight 4X. Still, actually seeing the Drengin Civil War raging on on the map makes the galaxy feel more alive. All in all, a good end to the Dread Lords Saga.
Wait, aren't you one of the major contributors to the Community Update? They've got your name listed right at the top of the credits. If this new mod is needed to undo some of your 'extreme' changes, why did you include them in the Community Update in the first place?
Yes, I was one of the main contributors. However, I quit working on the CU due to stress and IRL issues long before it was "finished".
As to why I added those extreme changes in the first place (mainly the changes to the farming improvements in order to improve AI behaviour, the removal of some of the power plant improvements and techs in order to prevent a bug, the changes to the starting improvements of the minor races in order to fix a bug, the removal of several starbase modules due to AI constraints, and the "balance" changes to several planetary improvements and techs)? Well, I thought I was improving the game. There were two commenters who voiced some concern regarding the changes (I think one was about the bonuses added to the Tech Victory technology, and the other about the changes to the farming improvements), but the majority was all in favour. In general though, I wasn't getting much feedback, despite constantly asking for it. It wasn't until after I quit the project and finally played an un-modded game again (which I hadn't done for several years) that I realised the mistakes I made. I tried telling the rest of the team to undo some of those changes, especially the one to the farming improvements, because it actually made things worse, but they kept them in and went in a direction that deviated from the base game even more. So, I began to repurpose my old mod in order to "fix" the CU, because I knew it would eventually get included into the base game.
TL/DR I was an idiot, who got swept away with the opportunity to finally fix the game, and made several mistakes, that I regretted ever since.
Also, sorry for the very late reply. You may have noticed, that I'm not getting many comments here. So I usually don't check very often. Still, I hope I answered your question.
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While I appreciate Stardock's intent incorporating the CEP like they did...well it was a flop as far as I am concerned. This mod from Gaunathor is true to the original game plus all the right tweaks and fixes the original game needed.
PS. What did you change in your versions of the campaigns? Also how do you rank the three campaigns?
I didn't do much with the campaigns. Mostly updating them to work with the new tech trees. The biggest change is restoring the Altarian outpost in the mission Pathfinder of the Dread Lords campaign. They weren't mentioned in the briefing for the mission, and so got removed in the Community Update. I restored them mostly because the mission is hard enough as it is, fighting alone against the Dread Lords and several Yor outposts.
My rating for the campaigns is pretty simple:
Dread Lords: 3rd place. It provides some decent background info for some of the races, and the reveal of the Dread Lords is just awesome in my opinion. Gameplay-wise it doesn't have much to offer. It's mostly the same few mission-types on repeat. Which is a problem with the campaigns in general. The uneven difficulty doesn't help matters. At least it got one feature, that the other campaigns don't have: alternate missions. If you lose specific missions, you can choose to play a different one, instead of retrying the same one again.
Dark Avatar: 2nd place. Playing the Drengin is a nice change of pace, but the campaign doesn't really do much with that fact. Still, seeing the slow corruption of the Korath across the first few missions, ending in the return of the Dread Lords, and the beginning of the civil war, was pretty good. The "extermination" of the Drath felt a bit rushed. The end of the Korx, on the other hand, was handled much better. Plus, having you escort the last survivors to safety makes the re-appearance of the Korx in GalCiv 3 less jarring than the sudden return of the Drath. We got two new mission types: espionage and escort (rather reach certain coordinates). The difficulty is less uneven, and the missions overall seem better crafted. It's a decent improvement over DL.
Twilight of the Arnor: 1st place. I'm a lore-nut, so getting more info on the Precursors and the Dread Lords is just fantastic. Starting with Precursor-ships makes the missions a bit easier. However, their upkeep is pretty hard on your economy. So, there is a tradeoff in using (or not using) them. The setup of the missions got better, once again. The overall difficulty is pretty even, thanks to the aforementioned Precursor-ships. However, the missions are still limited by what you can do in a straight 4X. Still, actually seeing the Drengin Civil War raging on on the map makes the galaxy feel more alive. All in all, a good end to the Dread Lords Saga.
PS: Sorry of the late reply.
As to why I added those extreme changes in the first place (mainly the changes to the farming improvements in order to improve AI behaviour, the removal of some of the power plant improvements and techs in order to prevent a bug, the changes to the starting improvements of the minor races in order to fix a bug, the removal of several starbase modules due to AI constraints, and the "balance" changes to several planetary improvements and techs)? Well, I thought I was improving the game. There were two commenters who voiced some concern regarding the changes (I think one was about the bonuses added to the Tech Victory technology, and the other about the changes to the farming improvements), but the majority was all in favour. In general though, I wasn't getting much feedback, despite constantly asking for it.
It wasn't until after I quit the project and finally played an un-modded game again (which I hadn't done for several years) that I realised the mistakes I made. I tried telling the rest of the team to undo some of those changes, especially the one to the farming improvements, because it actually made things worse, but they kept them in and went in a direction that deviated from the base game even more. So, I began to repurpose my old mod in order to "fix" the CU, because I knew it would eventually get included into the base game.
TL/DR I was an idiot, who got swept away with the opportunity to finally fix the game, and made several mistakes, that I regretted ever since.
Also, sorry for the very late reply. You may have noticed, that I'm not getting many comments here. So I usually don't check very often. Still, I hope I answered your question.