Shadow Empire

[Demiclise]

Anyone figured how to hack Design Stats yet? They can roll 70-130 and make a pretty big difference

Also Stratagems/Stratagem Counts, very important for Fate Cards

Oh and Linear Technologies, though I suppose a 999 INT researcher could do the trick.

how do you get 999 researcher? i am only able to increase till 99. 999 doesnt seem to work

After combing this thread I found this out. araara456 mentioned in I think page 4 or 5. Follow the line you wish to have 999. ex 02 00 00 00 39 00 39 00 00 00 that give you 99 right? Just change 02 to 03 and add a nine after a period so it will look like 03 00 00 00 39 00 39 00 39 00. Do not change it to 4 and try to get 9999 it will ctd and possibly corrupt the save.

[boxerdemon]

Anyone figured how to hack Design Stats yet? They can roll 70-130 and make a pretty big difference

Also Stratagems/Stratagem Counts, very important for Fate Cards

Oh and Linear Technologies, though I suppose a 999 INT researcher could do the trick.

how do you get 999 researcher? i am only able to increase till 99. 999 doesnt seem to work

You can't, as far as I'm aware. The way this game is coded makes it to where you can only edit values if you use the same number of digits. So credits can only go up to 999 if you're starting with 108. Once you get to 999, you can sell some metal or something to get to 1004 or whatever and that can be edited to 9999. If there is some card or way to get an advisor with 99 INT a boost in-game to 100 then you can get them to 999. If you try to go from 9 to 999 then the game doesn't like it and gets confused. I have tried to get 999 INT but I am unable to do so.

I may be doing it wrong, but I do space appropriately in memory viewer when editing values and the game still doesn't like it.

Edit: the above method did not work for me, but that may be due to user error or editing at the inappropriate time. It seems that this game only really likes to be edited at certain times, sometimes that is right after loading and sometimes it is at the end of a turn after you have completed everything.

[Demiclise]

Anyone figured how to hack Design Stats yet? They can roll 70-130 and make a pretty big difference

Also Stratagems/Stratagem Counts, very important for Fate Cards

Oh and Linear Technologies, though I suppose a 999 INT researcher could do the trick.

how do you get 999 researcher? i am only able to increase till 99. 999 doesnt seem to work

You can't, as far as I'm aware. The way this game is coded makes it to where you can only edit values if you use the same number of digits. So credits can only go up to 999 if you're starting with 108. Once you get to 999, you can sell some metal or something to get to 1004 or whatever and that can be edited to 9999. If there is some card or way to get an advisor with 99 INT a boost in-game to 100 then you can get them to 999. If you try to go from 9 to 999 then the game doesn't like it and gets confused. I have tried to get 999 INT but I am unable to do so.

I may be doing it wrong, but I do space appropriately in memory viewer when editing values and the game still doesn't like it.

Edit: the above method did not work for me, but that may be due to user error or editing at the inappropriate time. It seems that this game only really likes to be edited at certain times, sometimes that is right after loading and sometimes it is at the end of a turn after you have completed everything.

Sorry it didn't work for you. Try this, highlight the first number ex 9.9... then follow it left until you see a 2 double click and change it to 3
then you should change it to this 9.9.9.... ad the extra 9 after not before I made that mistake too.

[gorsan]

i am changing capability to 999
heroic to 999
ambition to 1
edit: capability seems to be limited to 5


This game is extremely annoying even with cheats
-why do i have to chase enemy after i win like 5th time
-nations gets zone from you even if you are in peace turns with them, but you cant !
-officers stats make no difference on research
-why do i have to confirm decisions like 100th time in like every 2 turns
-why officers are so restless i have to deal with them every turn
-cities get restless without any reason at all
-you have to be a genius to understand how logistics works in this game
- no way to make money even with a big city, manually sell everything until you cant. come on i am playing on easy mode !

so much potential but sooooo wasted game.

[Keenan004]

heroic to 999
edit: capability seems to be limited to 5

According to help "personality" is a 1 to 100 skill so I doubt 999 does any good.
Other Capabilities (like 9) work but still provide nothing more than 14XP per turn, so indeed sticking to 1 to 5 seems reasonable.

This game is extremely annoying even with cheats

I would not say annoying. But some aspects can still be hard even with cheating. This is multiple games in one (like: Logistics management, Resource management, People management, Research management, Unit design, Diplomacy & Military conflict): Cheating usually makes one area a walk in the park but the the others might be positively ore negatively affected but usually remain a challenge unless you find another cheat or start to understand the underlying mechanics of the "sub-game".

-why do i have to chase enemy after i win like 5th time

Because you either need to be MUCH stronger and effective so the enemy unit has no relevant combat strength anymore or (more likely) you need to accept that the military game is about maneuvering and encircling units rather than beating them back.
So typically a group of smaller fast units is a lot better than one "killing stack" for various reasons. Use multiple brigade level OHQs (later maybe corps level) instead of one giant army level OHQ.

-nations gets zone from you even if you are in peace turns with them, but you cant !

Yes, there are a few things around diplomacy that are weird (and hopefully get fixed over time). But I do not get the exact context here. From my experience if you at peace no one can get territory from no one by military means.

-officers stats make no difference on research

They make a lot of difference on the research speed (Bonus to BPs which can be huge).

-why do i have to confirm decisions like 100th time in like every 2 turns

a) Maybe around every 5 turns.
b) Because PP are a rare resource, so the game tries to give you chance to change these things without paying.
c) Just hit "No changes".

-why officers are so restless i have to deal with them every turn

If you played the people management right and chose ones fitting to your regime profile (and fitting to your current decisions), this will not happen anymore. If you are playing with "epochs" you can get unlucky to get an "epoch of egoism" early one, which can indeed be annoying.

-cities get restless without any reason at all

They can for various reasons but not without a reason (including a random event).

-you have to be a genius to understand how logistics works in this game

Logistics is hard to master (as it can be in real life - worked with several large logistics companies in my professional life). Initially the game bit more than it could chew. But this mostly comes to light, when you manage large networks of huge empires which already won the game or a very close to achieving this. Two emergency exits are being offered: Create another SHQ (essentially another regional logistics network) or play with "simplified logistics".
Also there are a few guides on logistics in the matrixgames forums that might help.

- no way to make money even with a big city, manually sell everything until you cant. come on i am playing on easy mode !

It is indeed strange that you start with zero tax rates. But as soon you succeed to raise the income tax to around 50% (and sales tax to 25% or 50%), cash flow begins to level out. Never played on "easy" so I cannot tell to which extent it influences. I would suggest to rather play "normal" - disabling some extras like epochs/cults/syndicate etc. to get to the core mechanisms to the game first.

so much potential but sooooo wasted game.

A complex game with a flat learning curve (plus a few flaws and and some room for improvement). But turn-based with lots of replayability potential - something which comes along every few years at best.
So I hope you will give it another chance some time. Good luck!

[Keenan004]

I wanted to share some findings from my cheat attempts in case there are still people wanting to do more.

Found a possibility to work with leader skills. However this only works with adjusting up to the number of skills (each single one up to level 999) which a leader has when he/she is added to the game (and potentially impacted by the way the character is added). Basically I can change existing skills into new ones and adjust their level.
Also after a few turns when the leader evolves (skills up and/or joins a party), the way it is stored in memory changes as well. After this I cannot change the skills anymore.
Interesting enough the leaders can skill up beyond 999 themselves (failing quite often when trying) but in case I did it manually the game crashed a few times.

So I assume we will never see a cheat table based on my findings. On the other hand most skills do nothing more than making sure that one succeeds with certain skill rolls.
This can be huge:

• getting a minor zone to join you early on
  getting a large movement bonus for your nearby OHQ units
  exploding BP invest for research

or mediocre:

• dealing with some negative event from time to time
  adding a combat bonus for a specific unit type which you don`t use often
  reducing the effect of old age.

After a turn skills are limited to twice their stats value, so if changing skills it is usually better to change the stats as well.

I can add a guide if needed but :
Don`t expect the game to become a walk in the park overall (at least not in any other way that was already possible by just tweaking the stats).
Don`t expect you can adapt things all the time easily.
Be prepared to invest some time.

Just as an indication what can be done I added an attachment with some leaders I tweaked this way. (PW: 1)

[illusionbreaker]

Found a possibility to work with leader skills. However this only works with adjusting up to the number of skills (each single one up to level 999) which a leader has when he/she is added to the game (and potentially impacted by the way the character is added).

Oh, I did this before. I didn't post the findings of my results because I thought everyone here stopped playing it.

The leader storage method changes if you load game from a save, you can only change leader skills on freshly generated leaders.

• Here are the skill IDs (in string):
  
  1 Bribery
  2 Diplomacy
  3 Leadership
  4 Deception
  5 Streetwise
  6 Oratory
  7 Survival
  8 6th Sense
  9 Intimidate
  10 Personal Combat
  11 Lead From the Front
  12 Endurance
  13 Escape Artist
  14 Administration
  15 Improvisation
  16 Against the Odds
  17Resist Influence
  18 High Command
  19 Investigation
  20 Trade
  21 Technician
  22 Medical
  23 Demolition
  24 Operational Command
  25 Science
  26 Prospecting
  27 Scavenging
  28 Interrogation
  29 Agriculture
  30 Inventor
  31 Tank Tactics
  32 Gun Tactics
  33 Infantry Tactics
  34 N/A
  35 N/A
  36 Offensive Tactics
  37 Defensive Tactics
  38 Mobile Tactics
  39 Defensive Works
  40 Covert Ops
  41 Ecology

Usually you can find a freshly generated leader by searching "X started career" (where X is their last name) which will have 1-3 results. Look up above that string for something that fits the pattern for the leader you want to edit; if it doesn't look like a statblock go to the next entry or load from save and try again.

Generally (but not always!) the formatting is:

leader age, leader personality block, leader statblock, then skills

some text then

..... [skill ID].... |spacer| .... [skill value] ...

and maybe more text and

..... [skill ID].... |spacer| .... [skill value] ...

Important to keep in mind! Max skill will reset to 2x the base Stat in 1-2 turns! For example, you can push Administration to 999, but it will go back to 2x the INT value if you don't change that too.

I haven't figured out how to hack political preferences, but it might be possible to do it during the "fresh generation" phase.

You can memory edit leader age/personality/stats at any time from loaded saves, so it's not critical to do it during save.

[Keenan004]

Oh, I did this before.

You might have saved me some time and a few crashes, if you had mentioned this before
On the other hand it was fun to experiment - so no real harm done.

I didn't post the findings of my results because I thought everyone here stopped playing it.

Saw the update from gorsan a week ago, so I figured, I was not the only one sticking with the game. The initial hype was big, so a crash landing was unavoidable. But like mentioned above: The game has potential to become a classic for turn-based strategy enthusiasts. Just needs fixing a few issues and adding more moddability (the latter was mentioned to be on the roadmap at some point).

The leader storage method changes if you load game from a save, you can only change leader skills on freshly generated leaders.
Generally (but not always!) the formatting is:

leader age, leader personality block, leader statblock, then skills

some text then
..... [skill ID].... |spacer| .... [skill value] ...
and maybe more text and
..... [skill ID].... |spacer| .... [skill value] ...

In each block between text passages I found up to three skills and they can be "bundled" so typical patterns are
..... [skill ID].... [skill value] ... [skill ID].... [skill value] ... [skill ID].... [skill value] ...
..... [skill ID].... [skill value] ... [skill ID].... [skill ID].... [skill value] ...[skill value] ...
..... [skill ID].... [skill ID] .... [skill ID].... [skill value] ... [skill value] ...[skill value] ...

I have the impression that the job changes (referred to in the text passages) each represents a kind of stratagem which brings along 1 to 3 skills (the one mentioned in the text plus up to two random ones). This is what you can find in these blocks.

I haven't figured out how to hack political preferences, but it might be possible to do it during the "fresh generation" phase.

Unfortunately same here. Only relation and loyalty (resulting from political preferences). Stumbled upon some info related to job assignment as well but there are enough in-game possibilities so I did not dig deeper. And some area where you can play with the looks of characters. But not much value in that (other than fun).

You can memory edit leader age/personality/stats at any time from loaded saves, so it's not critical to do it during save.

Agreed. Important issue is that I can modify skills only during the "creation phase" (like you called it). So only the initial leaders after game start and new ones when being added (mostly via stratagems).

[illusionbreaker]

You might have saved me some time and a few crashes, if you had mentioned this before
On the other hand it was fun to experiment - so no real harm done.

Haha, I gained this knowledge through lots of time and CTDs myself!

[gorsan]

thank you for your long reply to my post.
Keenan004

[illusionbreaker]

New findings!

After doing any orgCount work, you can search (after the orgCount stat block, use CTRL-F in memory viewer mode) for Cults using the term 'cult1_relation', which will yield string data looking like: [cult1_relation] ... [cult1_strength] ... [cult1_policy] ... [cult1_follower] ... [cult2_relation] ... [cult2_strength] ... [cult2_policy] ... [cult2_follower]

In case you have trouble with a Cult and want them gone, quickly cheat their strength to a tiny number, Suppress/Persecute them (ingame Decision) and boost other Cults, they'll die off within a few turns and hopefully won't damage your empire *too* much.

Cults I've corresponded to internal data so far:

cult1 - Shadow Cult
cult2 - Anima Circle
cult3 - Church of Syndic
cult6 - Mystic Temple

For a list of Cults and their effects check out [Link]

[illusionbreaker]

Found subunit stats! Use 4 bytes to search for initial AP, move the unit (spending some AP) then search for new value, then click on another unit and scan for the same AP to reduce random noise. Set display to "4 byte decimal" and the following format is valid for a subunit:

AP - Readiness - EXP - ?? - ?? - Morale

Action points causes lag above 200ish, so I suspect 9999 might cause a crash. Readiness and Morale should be set to 99 or 100 if you're mucking with those.

[Keenan004]

Found subunit stats! Use 4 bytes to search for initial AP, move the unit (spending some AP) then search for new value, then click on another unit and scan for the same AP to reduce random noise. Set display to "4 byte decimal" and the following format is valid for a subunit:

AP - Readiness - EXP - ?? - ?? - Morale

Action points causes lag above 200ish, so I suspect 9999 might cause a crash. Readiness and Morale should be set to 99 or 100 if you're mucking with those.

I assume these changes are just for the current turn, right?

If true, the reduced effort for below approach might be favorable most of the time.

For AP you get the same effect for all (up to 7) units in an Army as long as they start the turn close enough to their HQ. Commander with Mobile Tactics 999 provides 500-600 AP and around 700 AP (also depending on the unit type) if you add a HQ Doctrine with AP boost (Rush etc.).

The lag is dependent on the size of your empire and terrain, in 2-3 Zone (of reasonable size) empire, there is basically none - in a 10 Zone empire close to victory one (or not so close if playing on a huge map) it can make you worried for a few seconds, if the game actually crashed.
However using the AP for multiple attacks against stronger units (e.g. aliens) can cause them to run out of readiness and ammo, which causes them to surrender themselves . So be greedy but not too greedy

I do not try to raise skills beyond 999 because large four digit values tend to crash the game. However leaders themselves can raise their skills to 1000/1005 (plus artifacts can raise it by another 20), so not sure where exactly the limit is.

[Carrnage]

New findings!

After doing any orgCount work, you can search (after the orgCount stat block, use CTRL-F in memory viewer mode) for Cults using the term 'cult1_relation', which will yield string data looking like: [cult1_relation] ... [cult1_strength] ... [cult1_policy] ... [cult1_follower] ... [cult2_relation] ... [cult2_strength] ... [cult2_policy] ... [cult2_follower]

In case you have trouble with a Cult and want them gone, quickly cheat their strength to a tiny number, Suppress/Persecute them (ingame Decision) and boost other Cults, they'll die off within a few turns and hopefully won't damage your empire *too* much.

Cults I've corresponded to internal data so far:

cult1 - Shadow Cult
cult2 - Anima Circle
cult3 - Church of Syndic
cult6 - Mystic Temple

For a list of Cults and their effects check out [Link]

Found something like a promising lead for character stats, about 4 values (hex byte) before a variable there's a single value that counts the number of digits in the variable

EDIT: also scrap point string to search for is "scrapPoint" case sensitive

[illusionbreaker]

EDIT: also scrap point string to search for is "scrapPoint" case sensitive

This works! Have an upvote!