So, there's the Community Edition Guide included with GOG's release of GalCiv2.

But the Community Update (which the guide is referring to) is not included at all (as far as I can tell). Why has the guide been included then?

Edit: Looks like the of the update creators is also confused about the GOG release: http://forums.galciv2.com/457944/get;3603047. The GOG comes with Community Update applied then?

This leads us to another question: Since when are community mods/updates included with GOG releases (even replacing the original files)? While I appreciate the community's work on this update a lot this should be an optional download. The update apparently applies some major changes to the game altering a lot of the original gameplay.

Edit 2: There seems to be quite a mess: http://www.gog.com/forum/general/stardock_now_boarding_gogcom_3ccfe/post114

For me the major time was with the comeback of the Fallout games... which comes with the resolution patch automatically included. But there may be others ? I don't know at all... Agree with the optional option (and that I appreciate a lot community work :)). And would have appreciated to have it clearly noted on the gamecard (even if it's not a very big issue). I don't understand at all : is the community update included and working ? Can we deactivate it ?

I would rather see the Community Update as an extra as opposed to already being applied to the original game.
Reading the thread over at Stardock it looks as if the CU is not even installed correctly in the GOG version.

Hope this will be sorted out in one way or another.

And by the way; does the CU affect Dark Avatar or is it just for TA?

The community update hasn't been applied correctly: http://forums.galciv2.com/457944/get;3603081 I agree. Should be TA only.

Damn. Well, has anyone contacted support about this ?

Going to do that, still waiting for some more info.

Okay ! Thank you for doing this :)
I hope it will be fixed soon !

I just downloaded the Commuty Update and noticed that it just had a TA executable, so no DA. This update is supposed to run like a mod isn't it? The exe in the GOG version is the CU exe I suppose, so what could go wrong if I just installed the update over the GOG version?

Just to be clear; GOG should give us the original game without this modification already installed. And as mentioned, what if this update is further updated?

The GOG executable appears to be a new one, so I'm not sure: http://forums.galciv2.com/457944/get;3602994
I honestly have no idea. I'm no GalCiv2 expert so I'm waiting for the CU creators to to do some more digging, maybe they are able to provide us with a fix or at least some instructions on how to fix this ourselves.

Reposting my answer from the GalCiv 2 forums here, just for convenience sake:

Depends on what you mean by "fix". Do you mean "to apply the CU properly" or "to remove all of its changes"?

If you want to apply it then do the following: go to the folder Galactic Civilizations II\Data, take all the single files, plus the folders Campaigns, Scenarios and Tech Trees, and then move them to Galactic Civilizations II\Twilight\Data\English. When prompted, if you want to overwrite the files/folders, say yes.

The worst of the applied changes, in my opinion, is that you can no longer get planets from other races via diplomacy, and that you can't see the icons for food bonus tiles on planets. If you can live with that until we get an update that fixes this mess, then I'll be able to finish up v2.0 of my mod, Autumn Twilight, which will include the necessary files to revert those changes. If you can't wait that long, then I'll see if I can't upload those files ahead of time (along with instructions on where they need to go).


My remaining thoughts regarding this matter:

1. The CU came about because Stardock asked the GalCiv 2 modding community for help in fixing the remaining bugs of the game, and we gladly volunteered to do the work. In other words, the CU is an official update made by the community. Similar to the CU for Gothic 3. I really don't think GOG has any say in this matter. It's also very unlikely that the CU is going to be made optional. Though I'm very curious in how Stardock wants to apply it to the game.

2. I absolutely agree that the CU changes the gameplay too much. I came to that realisation after I quit the CU project due to RL issues and took some time to actually play with the CU instead of just test it. Sadly enough, the remaining members of the project went even further away from original gameplay. Due to this, I began retooling my original fix-mod.
Autumn Twilight v2.0 is basically what the CU should have been, in my opinion: bugfixes with a minimal amount of balance changes. The gameplay remains as close to the original as possible. The only exceptions are changes required in order to fix certain bugs.
While AT v2.0 is officially still a beta, it is functionally finished (i.e., feature-complete and as bug-free as I can make it). I just need to know how Stardock wants to apply the files from the CU, so I can tell what I need to keep and where I may need to place certain files.

Hi Gaunathor and thank you for your work.

I've installed the GOG version and followed your instruction above to move the single files and the folders you mentioned.
The game seems to be working, but is there a way to check if the mod is really active and all it's ok ?

I hope GOG and Stardock will release a correctly modded version soon.

Thanks a lot for this, and all your work :)
I'm personally very interested in your version of the CU. So I think I'll simply have to wait !
Thanks again for all your work, and take the time you need !

The easiest way I can think of is to go to the Pick Your Civilization screen (click on New Game and then Next), and see if any of the races has the tech Basic Space Construction. If yes, then the mod should work.

Also, if you have started a game before you made that change, then please go to folder My Documents\My Games\GC2TwilightArnor and delete all files with the ending .raceconfigxml. The game stores your race-configurations in those files, which prevents some of the changes of the CU to apply. You will also need to start a new game. Mod changes don't get applied to games already in progress.

I followed your instructions, deleted the *.raceconfigxml and started a new game and some races (not all of them) have the Basic Space Construction attribute, so I believe it should be ok.

I'll try the game this way for now but I look forward to your mod !
I hope there will be a table somewhere listing the differences between the CU and your AT2.0.

Thank you for the help.

I've included a 80 page changelog.pdf with the mod, which details all of the changes. The only things that aren't listed in that changelog are my changes to the campaigns (which boil down to "made them compatible with my changes to the tech trees") and the occasional typo-correction.

If that isn't enough, I could also upload the spreadsheet I used while working on the mod. However, that one is using the original game-values as a base.