NiGHTS: General Discussion

markusbeutel said:

I'm not planning on it... But that'll probably change if we can get custom improvement art into mods.



Version 11.52 - Released to http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=16650

IMPORTANT: DOWNLOAD/INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS!
Note that the following locations could differ depending on where you've installed CIV V.
1. Download and copy file into C:\<username>\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS
2. Delete your cache folder in C:\<username>\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\cache
3. Delete the contents of the ModUserData folder in C:\<username>\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\ModUserData
4. Verify your cache and defrag your CIV V files through Steam (right click, properties, local files, verify integrity.
5. Make sure your game is up to date with the December 2011 patch!
6. Load CIV V and click Install button in the ModBrowser.


Lots of work on the AI included in this successive patch. The AI's probably more balanced in this update than in any of the other ones so far. I've programmed the AI to favor medium/large sized cities as opposed to city-spamming, (although they will still keep expanding - and certain spawning situations will have a say in this).

You'll also now notice gradual difficulty jumps from level to level (this wasn't always gradual before ) - with lower level AI's fielding smaller armies. The AI should also have more of a pack mentality, in that they more or less stay within reach of each others' scores. As you go up in difficulty levels, the AI will start to go for Wonders more aggressively and settle closer to your borders.

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Is prince still "normal" / "medium" difficulty? Can you list the (dis)advantages the player or ai gets in low/high dif.?

Was the cityplacement limit changed? Was it not 2 squares between cities? Because I'm finding AI cities that are placed with just one square between them, but for some reason only for America. Naturally those cities will be utterly stunted in growth but if the amount of cities are what is that counts I can understand it, this naturally also explains why they have so many cities in such a small area.

All other civs (in the game; jap, france, iroq, rus, greece, china, otto, azte, arabia) seems to place their cities at the usual 2/3 squares (more of 3 then 2). It's not all of americas cities but there are quite a few of them with the 1 sqr placement.

When do you forsee posting this version to the "official" Civ5 mod menu.

black213 said:

Yup, the Entrepot was very powerful.

Also, on your comment to me, I'd say your mod deserved it's subforum a lot earlier than when it got it.


By the way, I took the liberty of improving the civ trait text. I found them to look a bit lacking, and that was because they didn't have those little nifty icons that are always nice to look at c5happy:, ...)
I uploaded the modified one here http://uploading.com/files/e5amdbmm/Traits.rar/, feel free to add it in to your next version of NIGHTS.

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Thanks black213 - I was debating whether or not to include them, (as vanilla sort of includes them half of the time).

IxI said:

Is prince still "normal" / "medium" difficulty? Can you list the (dis)advantages the player or ai gets in low/high dif.?

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I'll list complete level info when I get home from work. It's the fairest versions yet, though, in terms of AI bonuses.

looorg said:

Was the cityplacement limit changed? Was it not 2 squares between cities? Because I'm finding AI cities that are placed with just one square between them, but for some reason only for America. Naturally those cities will be utterly stunted in growth but if the amount of cities are what is that counts I can understand it, this naturally also explains why they have so many cities in such a small area.

All other civs (in the game; jap, france, iroq, rus, greece, china, otto, azte, arabia) seems to place their cities at the usual 2/3 squares (more of 3 then 2). It's not all of americas cities but there are quite a few of them with the 1 sqr placement.

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Probably just random that they're spacing differently from other Civ's, (but the minimum distance was changed to 2 in v11.4). The AI generally just places cities,(and build improvements), according to which tiles have the best yields. If they're boxed in or lack room, they'll go for the minimum spacing. Not having this option led to some AI lagging behind and the complete runaways you had in previous updates.

Heinzsen said:

When do you forsee posting this version to the "official" Civ5 mod menu.

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Barring any major bugs that come up between now and then - later tonight when I get home.

Something that I thought of last night...

In Vanilla Civ 5, the greater the population, the higher the unhappiness. In the early, lower stages of unhappiness, Vanilla Civ does two things. First, the population growth rate is cut to a quarter. This actually works to help the player a bit, keeping production up while preventing the player from falling deeper into an unhappiness "debt." Secondly, the city managers will allocate away from food tiles and towards production tiles, helping the player build things faster that might alleviate the unhappiness.

The two things still persist in NiGHTS, but they actually work to harm the unaware player. So first, since more population helps happiness rather than harms it, perhaps the early, lower stages of unhappiness should cut at production (or some other penalty--science perhaps?) rather than cut the growth rate? Secondly, perhaps the city manager defaults should not shift away from food tiles?

Now an aware player of NiGHTs will micromanage cities to boost growth as much as they want, but some shifts to the default might help casual players.

Worker boats have a promotion that says they cant enter deep ocean until after Astronomy, even after that tech they can't enter ocean squares.

Also the tooltip for Settlers says the minimum city placement is 4 squares, so that changed and is no longer valid.

I have a couple of questions about the new mechanics, but first I just gotta say; you did a fantastic job with this! It's like a whole new game and the support you give here on these forums- you have better customer service than Steam!

I don't get governments. Is the only way to use them through the revolutions? Or do you automatically adopt them on the whole when you research the tech? When not in a cultural rev, am I using Despotism? Do I need cultural revs to change gov..?

SonnyBowler said:

I have a couple of questions about the new mechanics, but first I just gotta say; you did a fantastic job with this! It's like a whole new game and the support you give here on these forums- you have better customer service than Steam!

I don't get governments. Is the only way to use them through the revolutions? Or do you automatically adopt them on the whole when you research the tech? When not in a cultural rev, am I using Despotism? Do I need cultural revs to change gov..?

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Thanks SonnyBowler.

Unlocking the government techs will allow them to be chosen in a cultural revolution - at which point the government you choose during the cultural revolution is only active for the length of the CR depending on your game speed.

Despotism is the only government unlocked at the start of the game, the rest require their specific techs to be researched.

markusbeutel said:

The AI is actually coded to stop trading Iron - I believe it's in either the industrial or modern era - I'll have to check the XML's, but I've pushed this back to the future era, so they should always be trading it. They're probably using it all up I would think.

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Can you also make it so Coal is tradeable throughout the game as well?

Thanks again for the quick response!

One more question: do great people no longer become tile improvements?

Huck Finn said:

Can you also make it so Coal is tradeable throughout the game as well?

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I could - if it isn't already.

SonnyBowler said:

Thanks again for the quick response!

One more question: do great people no longer become tile improvements?

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They don't, no. Academies, Manufactories, and Customs Houses now function as worker improvements unlocked through techs - just like all other improvements. Personally, I found them to be a weak option compared to insta-wonders, free techs, and trade route income (in all but the earliest cases) - and the AI rarely built them.

Great Artists still just have the culture bomb - but they've been renamed Great Works (created by Moriboe and also found in his UU mod in the Modpack section of Civfanatics), which also grant an instant +100 culture and +50 culture per era up until the modern era.

Once we are able to get custom graphics for improvements into mods, I might re-add some sort of GP tile improvements.

v11.52 released to the ModBrowser - it's the same version that's up at CivFanatics but includes a few extra tool-tip fixes regarding city-spacing.

If you encounter any graphical bugs, follow the manual install instructions and make to delete old versions of the mod.

1. Delete your cache folder in C:\<username>\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\cache
2. Delete the contents of the ModUserData folder in C:\<username>\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\ModUserData
3. Verify your cache and defrag your CIV V files through Steam (right click, properties, local files, verify integrity.
4. Make sure your game is up to date with the December 2011 patch!

Great Merchants are useless if you conquer every city state around you

And the policy "Autocracy" in the order tree doesn't work, specialists don't get +1hammer

Is there any chance of reverting back the trait system to how it was before? I found that in the pre-modded Civilization I'd always be picking the same person based on their traits, and now that we've gone back to (essentially) the same system that problem has come back in.

Perhaps a hybrid of the two could work? That is, each state has two (Or one, even) traits similar to the last style you used, and then has their own specific perk based on their style/normal trait (Such as Alexander getting a city state perk, Ramses getting a wonder based perk, etc, etc). Think something like that is viable?

IxI said:

Great Merchants are useless if you conquer every city state around you

And the policy "Autocracy" in the order tree doesn't work, specialists don't get +1hammer

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Well - you can still use them for Golden Ages, which is probably a better choice than vanilla Custom Houses to begin with. You right about the Autocracy policy - it's actually giving +1 Science... Will be fixed in the next update.

saiyaz said:

Is there any chance of reverting back the trait system to how it was before? I found that in the pre-modded Civilization I'd always be picking the same person based on their traits, and now that we've gone back to (essentially) the same system that problem has come back in.

Perhaps a hybrid of the two could work? That is, each state has two (Or one, even) traits similar to the last style you used, and then has their own specific perk based on their style/normal trait (Such as Alexander getting a city state perk, Ramses getting a wonder based perk, etc, etc). Think something like that is viable?

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Out of curiosity, which Civ is it that you're always picking? As for combining the two - for UI reasons alone this won't happen, but one thing to keep in mind is that the UA's and traits are essentially the same thing, just with different naming conventions. At least half of the traits from <11.4 are still in the game.

Wu
The spawn rate of Great Generals is increased by +100%, and during a Golden Age, military units receive +3 extra movement points.

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3 extra movement? Is that a typo?

Catastrophe90 said:

3 extra movement? Is that a typo?

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It's not - only during a golden age though... Could be reduced to two if its abused too much, although golden ages don't come as quickly or last as long in the mod compared to vanilla CIV V.

Well its more about stuff like CKNs running through 3 Hills per turn and Trebuchets that can move, set up and fire on the same turn. Then again, I don't know how common GAs have become in NiGHTS (haven't played since v107), so I'll give the mod a try before I say more.

Increasing the cityplacement limit from 2 to 3 seems to have resolved alot of issues. No more of those ******** city spamming with 1 or 2 squares between them that never amounted to anything.

This has evened out the score/tech and policy pace for all involved civilizations in three different 500turn games (marathon/large). AI is still slighlty ahead on tech but not by any ridiculous 10-15+ amounts. Policy is within a few points (adjusting for wonders etc that give free policies). Score is usually within 100points or so from eachother unless war or chokepoint building -- which would not really have been helped if they could have built more cities in their very tiny area.

What is really doing those poor civs in is the AI mindless building of useless units -- which I know we probably cant do anything about, but it leads to them entering a spiral of debt they can't ever really come out of it seems. I'm playing around with increasing the return gold on destroyed units but they still dont seem to be overly interested in destroying old useless units.

The Egypt UB might be totally uber, the Roman UB is a bit odd since it replaces barracks and gives nice things but it doesn't give your unit any free xp and there are no free melee xp things for quite a long time besides the barrack.

I know Markus isn't down with the GP buildings , but here is my last ditch reasons why they should have it still:

1. You get great people long before you can build the manufactory, custom houses, etc. So the buildings are useful early on when you don't have them.

2. Powerful tile that last entire game > 6 turn golden age. Choosing between short term reward vs. long term reward is a good gameplay mechanic.

3. You could allow it so the GP could put down their building anywhere, making it better, without the terrain restrictions that academies and the like have on them. This is really handy if you have a weak city that needs a particular boost in an area but doesn't have any good terrain. A city without hills or woods can really use that great engineer building.

4. You could make them more powerful than the upgraded improvements?

In other news, I agree with the above poster about the Roman UB. It's a nice building, but it actually sucks right at the time you need it most- when you have the Legion. Having no promotions hurts that unit a lot. It's only after you get beyond that era that the nice production boost of the Auxliary fort becomes nice. So maybe that needs tweaking or the Roman legion should come with the Open terrain combat bonus or something.

I'd also add that I'd love permanent governments or some mechanic like that some time in the future. So many possibilities with that, and I'd like to see the different governments being very situationally dependent... The governments should have positives but also weaknesses. Too many choices in the game are always a net positive, theres no downside ever to anything, they are all just good in a different way. Something like Feudalism could slow science but increase military output or decrease happiness, etc, many possibilities. Communism could boost up productivity but limit culture and gold. Democracy could boost gold and culture but severly hamper war mongering with much increased penalties for having military units. The possibilites are endless. It would make the game feel more unique. And it could create neat situations where gaining the tech for a certain government at a certain time might be a new key to victory.