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.

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

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 +n. I suspect the ctrl+n issue is still not completely resolved.

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??

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

bump

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

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

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)