GalCiv 2 Ability Overview

Racial Abilities

There are about 30 abilities that affect your entire empire: how good your economy is, how fast your population grows, etc.  It is possible to have negative bonuses, resulting in penalties.

These only apply to racial abilities. Planetary Improvements and Tech bonuses use a second table listed below.

0	Economics	Increases how much money your colonies produce.
1	Weapons	Increases the effectiveness of your weapons.
2	Defense	Increases the effectiveness of our defenses.
3	Speed	Increases the amount of moves your ships get each turn.
4	Morale	Increases the happiness of your people, giving you a higher approval rating.
5	Population Growth	Increases how quickly your population grows.
6	Social Production	Makes your planetary improvements build quicker.
7	Military Production	Makes your ships build faster.
8	Research	Makes your techs research faster.
9	Influence	Increases your cultural influence in the galaxy; this gives you more votes in the United Planets and makes it more likely that colonies belonging to other races will "flip" to you.
10	Trade	Increases revenue from trade routes.
11	Diplomacy	Affects your relations with the other civilizations. A higher diplomacy can help your relations and helps you when trading.
12	Hit Points	Increases the hitpoints for your ships.
13	Repair	Makes your ships repair faster.
14	Sensors	Increases the area around your ships and planets that is "visible".
15	Espionage	Gets you more for your money when spying on other races.
16	Soldiering	Helps your soldiers when invading a planet.
17	Interest Rates	Higher interest rates help you when you are purchasing a planetary improvement or a ship.
18	Planet Quality	If high enough, will increase the class of all the planets you have colonized.
19	Trade Routes	Determines the number of trade routes you can have.
20	Crime	Unused.
21	Cabinet	Unused.
22	Range	Increases the distance a ship can travel from your starbases and planets.
23	Luck	Increases the likelihood that something good will happen to you.
24	Courage	Helps your ships in battle.
25	Creativity	Increases the likelihood that you will randomly research a tech.
26	Government	Unused.
27	Loyalty	Makes your citizens less likely to revolt and culture flip.
28	Logistics	Determines the number of ships in a fleet.
29	Miniaturization	Reduces the size of the components on a ship and increases hull size.
30	Home Planet Quality	Makes the planet with your initial colony a higher class planet.

Example:

<Ability Name="Weapons">
		<AbilityIndex>1</AbilityIndex>
		<AvailableOptions>2</AvailableOptions>
		<Option0Text>Superior</Option0Text>
		<Option0Bonus>10</Option0Bonus>
		<Option0Cost>1</Option0Cost>
		<Option1Text>Master</Option1Text>
		<Option1Bonus>20 </Option1Bonus>
		<Option1Cost>2</Option1Cost>
		<BonusUnits>%</BonusUnits>
	</Ability>

Planet Improvements

The table below explains the bonuses which are used within PlanetImprovements.xml. Many of these bonuses are also used in Tech entries to provide passive bonuses to the civilization that owns them. When possible, use of the modding tools that come with TotA are suggested when trying to make new improvements or techs. Some of these values may no longer be used*.

The S_ before a field name indicates that it's a string field.  The F_ before a field indicates that the value is a floating point number. This is for use by the parser.

 

S_Name	This is the name displayed in the game
S_InternalName	This is a unique identifier which we use to track the improvement.
S_Description	This is a description of what the improvement does.
S_Type	This sets the type of improvement: Destroy, Normal, SuperProject, GalacticAchievement, or TradeGood.  Destroy is only used by the Decommission entry, which is used to destroy improvements that have been built.  There should only be one of these as there is no advantage in having multiple destruction improvements. A Normal improvement can be built multiple times on multiple planets and affect only the planet on which they are built.  SuperProjects, GalacticAchievements, and TradeGoods have limits about how often they can be built. SuperProjects and TradeGoods can only be built by one civilization, but they can be stolen by invasion.  They benefit the entire civilization that controls them, not just the planet on which they are built.  TradeGoods can be "traded" to other civilizations.  The civilization that controls it is the only civilization that can trade it, but they still retain the benefit from the trade good after trading it, and the other civilization still gets the bonuses.  GalacticAchievements can be built once by each civilization, but you still get the benefit of a duplicate galactic achievement if you conquer or culture flip a world with the duplicate achievement.
Cost	This is the cost to build the improvement, which affects how long it takes to build the improvement.
Maintenance	This is the maintenance cost that the improvement takes per turn after it is built.
S_IconName	This is the graphic (a png) that is used in the list entries on the Colony Management Window.
S_QueryGraphicName	This is the graphic shown in the context area that describes the improvement.
PlacementLimit	This field is used to limit the number of this type of improvement that can be built on a planet.
ManufactureBonus	This is the value of the bonus to production.
MoraleBonus	This is the value of the bonus to the morale (approval) of a planet.
EconomicBonus	This is the value of the bonus when calculating income from the planet.
PrestigeBonus	This is the value of the bonus to the influence of the planet.
PlanetaryQualityBonus	This is a bonus to the planet's quality, which affects its class and the number of useable tiles.
StarshipQualityBonus	This is a bonus to the attack and defense values of the ships built on the planet.
ResearchBonus	This is a bonus to the research production of the planet.
S_TechRequirement	This is the ID of the tech that unlocks this improvement to be built on a planet.
Industry	This is the amount of manufacturing points that this improvement produces.
Food	This is the amount of megatons of food that this improvement produces.
Research	This is the amount of research points that this improvement produces.
Indestructable	This means that the player cannot destroy this improvement.  The initial colony has this tag.
S_BriefDescription	This is a shorter description of the improvement, should be able to fit on one line.
PlanetaryDefenseBonus	This adds a bonus to defense when defending against invasions.
AI	The AI uses this number when deciding what to build.
Employment	Unused.
S_UpgradeTarget	This is the internal name of the improvement that this improvement upgrades.
EnhanceLevel	This is the amount this improvement enhances a tile, with a value of 1-3.  One is a yellow tile, two is a green tile, and three is a red tile.  Enhancement projects are removed from the surface as soon as they are built and their affect applied, so you won't want to add this to an improvement that has another affect.
AbilityType	This is the Ability ID for Economics, etc.  This is only used by Trade Goods, SuperProject, and GalacticAchievements.
AbilityAmount	This is the amount of ability added by this improvement, as a percent.  For example, 10 is a 10% bonus.
S_Omega	Unused.
F_MightMultiplier	This is a spin variable that makes the AI think that you're tougher than you are, so they won't try attacking you because they think that you're an easy target.
F_LogisticLimit	This value increases the number of ships that you can have in an orbital fleet.  The code that uses this looks for specific improvements, so adding this to additional improvements would have no affect.
F_AbilityFactor	This value specifies the percentage of the base ability that should be added to the base ability to arrive at the actual ability.  For example, a value of 0.25 would increase the base ability by 25%
ShipMoveBonus	This adds additional movement points to ships built on a planet with this improvement.  This also uses a hard-coded improvement name.
ResistanceBonus	This is a bonus to your colonists' ability to resist the cultural influence of other races. In other words, it makes the planet less likely to culture flip.
SpecialID	A unique identifier used by trade goods and galactic achievements. This will almost certainly cause problems if there are duplicate SpecialIDs and possibly if there are gaps between the numbers.
S_DataUpdateRequired	This is a delimited list of data that needs to be updated internally when the improvement becomes or ceases to be operational.  Possible values are: ShipTypes, MiniMap.
ShipSpeedBonus	Like ShipMoveBonus, this adds additional movement points to ships built on a planet with this improvement, but without hard-coded names, so this can be used by multiple improvements.
F_OwnerBonus	This is only used by the temple improvements (more hard-coded names), which re-direct some of the money from other races' tourism income. It's a percent: so, 0.25 = 25%.
F_NonOwnerPenalty	This is the penalty you get if you don't have one of these temples built and there is another built.
MaxAlignment and MinAlignment	These are also used by the temple improvements, to determine if the civilization is affected by the temple improvements.

Example:

<Improvement>
		<S_InternalName>CapitalCity</S_InternalName>
		<S_Name>Civilization Capital</S_Name>
		<PlacementLimit>1</PlacementLimit>
		<S_Type>Normal</S_Type>
		<Maintenance>0</Maintenance>
		<Cost>0</Cost>
		<S_IconName>NeutralCivCapitol.png</S_IconName>
		<S_QueryGraphicName>NeutralCivCapitol.png</S_QueryGraphicName>
		<CanHaveAgents>0</CanHaveAgents>
		<Indestructable>1</Indestructable>
		<S_TechRequirement>0</S_TechRequirement>
		<Industry>24</Industry>
		<Food>16</Food>
		<Research>24</Research>
		<MoraleBonus>25</MoraleBonus>
		<EconomicBonus>10</EconomicBonus>
		<PrestigeBonus>50</PrestigeBonus>
		<S_InvasionMovie1>NeutralCivCapitol_Normal.bik</S_InvasionMovie1>
		<S_InvasionMovie2>NeutralCivCapitol_Smoking.bik</S_InvasionMovie2>
		<S_InvasionMovie3>NeutralCivCapitol_Damaged.bik</S_InvasionMovie3>
		<S_InvasionMovie4>NeutralCivCapitol_Ruined.bik</S_InvasionMovie4>
	</Improvement>

Tech Abilities

Techs use many of the same abilities as Planet Improvements. The .xml entries are fairly similar as seen in the example:

<Biology ID="PlanetaryImprovements">
      <DisplayName>Planetary Improvements</DisplayName>
      <Cost>200</Cost>
      <Description>Enables us to build factories, farms, and other industrial items on alien worlds.</Description>
      <Details>Alien worlds provide new challenges to the industrial and farming trades. Different soils, climates and gravities all have their effect on what and how we build. With this new technology we are better able to face those challenges.</Details>
      <Requires>Xeno Engineering</Requires>
      <Category>Manufacturing</Category>
      <SocialProductionAbility>10</SocialProductionAbility>
      <MilitaryProductionAbility>10</MilitaryProductionAbility>
      <ResearchAbility>10</ResearchAbility>
      <Model>event10</Model>
      <AIValue>15</AIValue>
   </Biology>

With the ToTA expansion, some of these have been altered within Tech trees for each race. These have a similar format, but have data which is not included since it is present in the main tech listing. In this usage, the included lines within the racial tech tree overwrite the same entries in the main TechTree.xml listing.

<Industry ID="PlanetaryImprovements">
			<Category>Military</Category>
			<Group>None</Group>
			<Alignment>None</Alignment>
			<Requires>ArtificialGravity</Requires>
			<WillingnessToTrade>70</WillingnessToTrade>
		</Industry>

Notice the change in tech type and the requirement.

Starbase Module Abilities

 

Here is an example starbase module:

<StarbaseModule InternalName="BattleStations">  
		<Name>Battle Stations</Name>  
		<Model>Starbase01</Model>  
		<Tech_Requirement>Space Weapons</Tech_Requirement>  
		<Module_Requirement></Module_Requirement>  
		<Description>Basic battle module needed for adding weapons and defenses to aid the starbase and nearby ships. </Description>  
		<ModuleSize>2</ModuleSize>  
		<StarbaseAbility>StarbaseAttack</StarbaseAbility>  
		<AttMassDriver>1</AttMassDriver>  
		<AttMissile>1</AttMissile>  
		<AttBeam>1</AttBeam>  
		<ModuleCost>200</ModuleCost>  
		<Type>Defense</Type>  
	</StarbaseModule>

The InternalName must be unique. The Name is the display name.  The model string is unused because all of them use Starbase01.  Tech_Requirement is the internal name of the tech that is needed to add the module to the starbase.  The Module Requirement is the internal name of the starbase module that must be present on the starbase before this module can be built. The Module Size is likely still unused.  StarbaseAbility determines what the module does. Type determines what kind of starbase that module can be built. Mining starbases can only be built on resources. Below is a table containing most of the starbase types.

Military	For military starbases only.
Economy	For economy starbases only.
Culture	For influence starbases only.
Mining	For mining starbases only.
Defense	Modules to aid in the defense of starbases; can be installed on any starbase.
Range	Modules to increase the area of the starbase’s influence.
Sensor	Modules to increase the base sensor range of the starbase.
Terror	Modules for Terror Stars only. Special Use.

Type "Any" can be used on any starbase, but is only used for repair. Usage with other abilities may not work as intended.

 These are the possible StarbaseAbility strings:

AttackAssist	Increases the attack values of ships with weapons in the area of effect.
Culture	Increases the influence of your civilization in its area of effect.
DefenseAssist	Increases the defense values of ships with defenses in the area of effect.
Mining	Increases the bonuses from mining a resource
ProductionAssist	Increases the production on planets in the area of effect.
RepairAssist	Increases the rate at which ships repair themselves in the area of effect.
ShipDocking	Unused, but was meant to allow ships to dock at the starbase, similar to being in orbit of a planet.
SlowEnemies	Decreases the move/attack points that an enemy ship can use in its area of effect.
SpeedAssist	Increases the move/attack points that one of your ships can use in its area of effect.
StarbaseAttack	Gives the starbase weapons
StarbaseDefense	Gives the starbase defenses
StarbaseRange	Increases the distance that a ship can travel from the starbase
StarbaseSensors	Increases the sensor range of the starbase
TerrorStar	Increases the completion of the terror star. A total value of 100 will complete the base. Values 100+ untested.
Trade	Increases the amount of revenue that a freighter on a trade route brings in while it is in the area of effect.

  

There are a few fields that give the values for the StarbaseAbility. StarbaseAbilityValue is the generic one. 

These three are the values for adding weapon values to the starbase or ships in the area of effect: AttBeam, AttMissile, and AttMassDriver. 

These three are the values for adding defense values to the starbase or ships in the area of effect: DefShields, DefPointDefense, and DefArmor.

This was in the code, but it seems that it should just use the StarbaseAbilityValue because it doesn't require it to be stored differently than any of the other values: SensorRange

• These tables were created by Cari Begle, aka CariElf and taken from their modding guide for Version 1.2 of Galactic Civilizations II. This has been reposted here for sake of preservation and hope of updates for more recent game versions. Some of it may be verbatim until better explanations are available.

Source: CariElf's Modding Guide