NiGHTS: General Discussion

makrisgialos said:

A thought is to increase very much the strength of embarked units,but i dont know if this is possible.

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Naval Warfare is a weak part of CIV 5 and almost negligible, if you increase the strength of embarked units there will be no need for early and mid game navy at all, I'll just embark a well promoted archer, start exploring, I can easily go on land to heal in contrast to any naval unit which lacks the Supply promotion and thus cannot heal, and when in need I'll easily survive an attack from a barbarian triremes, go on land, heal and destroy the barbarian trireme or whatever triremes I encounter.

As mentioned earlier..

and when embarking is a terrible idea

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Military Units late game seem to just wreck your stability rating. I mean, I'm rocking something like 32 because of my policies costing 20 each and then I make two Mechanized Infantry and I'm in the negatives already. Is this supposed to make military conquest impossible?

Fruscainte said:

Military Units late game seem to just wreck your stability rating. I mean, I'm rocking something like 32 because of my policies costing 20 each and then I make two Mechanized Infantry and I'm in the negatives already. Is this supposed to make military conquest impossible?

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I'll admit it can seem harsh at times. Military unit values as is are more in sync with the game when the Tech Pyramid was still a Tech Tree so I will have to take a look at this.

That being said, personally, I was disappointed in the overall difficulty level of Vanilla Civ and would rather the game trend towards the difficult side of the spectrum.

Your point is well taken, though. I don't want to make a military victory completely unreachable in any case. That was part of the reason why I eliminated the Unrest from the number of cities you have. Training Veteren units that offer a discount on Unrest was another step I took in attempting to balance any late game military unrest struggles. You also have the option of sticking with lower-level Government types if you're planning a military-like game experience.

In the next update expect a reduction of roughly 10% on Military Unrest. I could see this going up to around a 25% reduction, but that's probably the most I would ever discount. The next update will also take steps to make the AI easier to negotiate with via Diplomacy in a way that hasn't yet been explored in any Mods so that may help as well.

How have you enjoyed the game so far? Thoughts on the Government system, (SJS) Specialist Job System, and Tech Pyramid specifically?

Zyxpsilon said:

Activated within the current LeoPaRd concept phase, have a look by clicking below and start thinking about what your own 80x80 Mod_Icon should look like!

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Your answer?

Zyxpsilon said:

Your answer?

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Zyxpsilon - sorry I didn't get back to you earlier. Either in the next update this weekend or the one after that I'll have a custom title page / main menu in place and if you could maybe take whatever elements you think fit the mod best from this image and encapsulate them into an icon of your design -I think that would add a nice touch once Leopard is complete and fully integrated. If I don't have the title page completed for this weekend's update I'll send you jpeg once it is complete.

Don't bother sending a JPG, i'll pick some stuff off the main page and once done ask for final approval right here!
Minor detail for now, AFAIC.

markusbeutel said:

I'll admit it can seem harsh at times. Military unit values as is are more in sync with the game when the Tech Pyramid was still a Tech Tree so I will have to take a look at this.

That being said, personally, I was disappointed in the overall difficulty level of Vanilla Civ and would rather the game trend towards the difficult side of the spectrum.

Your point is well taken, though. I don't want to make a military victory completely unreachable in any case. That was part of the reason why I eliminated the Unrest from the number of cities you have. Training Veteren units that offer a discount on Unrest was another step I took in attempting to balance any late game military unrest struggles. You also have the option of sticking with lower-level Government types if you're planning a military-like game experience.

In the next update expect a reduction of roughly 10% on Military Unrest. I could see this going up to around a 25% reduction, but that's probably the most I would ever discount. The next update will also take steps to make the AI easier to negotiate with via Diplomacy in a way that hasn't yet been explored in any Mods so that may help as well.

How have you enjoyed the game so far? Thoughts on the Government system, (SJS) Specialist Job System, and Tech Pyramid specifically?

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I would first like to say I appreciate the response.

Perhaps I need to get out of my Vanilla King-level Mindset (I had to go down to Prince actually for your Mod it makes its so much Harder >_>) of simply culture boosting off of 3 cities to Utopia, and then go for Conquest and if I start to lose crank out a Utopia Project last second in 10 turns.

Nonetheless, I do love the mod. The government system is good, but I do have an issue with it. Late game, such as Republic and Communism I believe, holy does that eat into Stability. I mean, adopting Communism takes away 20 Stability, and more things in the tree take it away further up to another 21 points for the final tier along with like 100% tax rate on buildings. Now I have no issue with the concept of the idea of losing Stability, but to that extent? You simply don't have the amount of Resources to handle that. Perhaps adopting the policies should be reduced and the final policies remain the same as they are? I like the strategy of if you want to dive deep into a pool you got to suffer a bit for it; however, making me suffer that immensely simply for taking a new tree every time gets a bit absurd, because delving into some trees is just not going to happen when it requires something like 100% building tax. Then, late game, you get Anarchy which in my opinion is just completely overpowered compared to the other ones. I'm thinking about flat out skipping policies and saving up so I can burst out the entire Anarchy once it becomes available. Because, as I said earlier, unless you expand all over the map (which is impossible without an army) you simply wont have the resources to support all that stability.

I like the Government system, but I also liked the old system a bit too. I liked having specific trees for Food, Production, Gold, and Science. Now it doesn't merit 4 different trees, but perhaps one tree where you get those options or some of those options? And perhaps some trees that make other ones not work anymore? Such as, Democracy and Republic remove Despotism/Feudalism/Monarchy or something of those natures.

And the Tech Pyramid is fantastic.

Fruscainte said:

I would first like to say I appreciate the response.

Perhaps I need to get out of my Vanilla King-level Mindset (I had to go down to Prince actually for your Mod it makes its so much Harder >_>) of simply culture boosting off of 3 cities to Utopia, and then go for Conquest and if I start to lose crank out a Utopia Project last second in 10 turns.

Nonetheless, I do love the mod. The government system is good, but I do have an issue with it. Late game, such as Republic and Communism I believe, holy does that eat into Stability. I mean, adopting Communism takes away 20 Stability, and more things in the tree take it away further up to another 21 points for the final tier along with like 100% tax rate on buildings. Now I have no issue with the concept of the idea of losing Stability, but to that extent? You simply don't have the amount of Resources to handle that. Perhaps adopting the policies should be reduced and the final policies remain the same as they are? I like the strategy of if you want to dive deep into a pool you got to suffer a bit for it; however, making me suffer that immensely simply for taking a new tree every time gets a bit absurd, because delving into some trees is just not going to happen when it requires something like 100% building tax. Then, late game, you get Anarchy which in my opinion is just completely overpowered compared to the other ones. I'm thinking about flat out skipping policies and saving up so I can burst out the entire Anarchy once it becomes available. Because, as I said earlier, unless you expand all over the map (which is impossible without an army) you simply wont have the resources to support all that stability.

I like the Government system, but I also liked the old system a bit too. I liked having specific trees for Food, Production, Gold, and Science. Now it doesn't merit 4 different trees, but perhaps one tree where you get those options or some of those options? And perhaps some trees that make other ones not work anymore? Such as, Democracy and Republic remove Despotism/Feudalism/Monarchy or something of those natures.

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I debated having different governments disable others, but held off on the initial release of 3.0 as I felt it would hinder feedback and testing on what policies are under/over powered and the Stability issues that players will deal with. It's safe to say that in the next update, Governments from different ERA's will disable each other which should add strategy on when to beeline certain techs and eras. This was my goal all along and will be one of the new additions to this weekends release.

I do see myself re-implementing bonuses to to improvements like in previous versions of NiGHTS but I agree with you that there wont be specific trees relegated to this. After introducing the (SPS) Specialist Job System I wanted players to get a feel for the new improvements and didn't want any other options out there that would distract them from using this system.

As far as Tax goes, all the Governments are cumulative to this point so it is possible to avoid a high tax rate by choosing good combos. I really wanted money to not be a bottomless pit in this mod - it's something you have to really earn through improvements and buildings.

Anarchy is a powerful tree - but it does come later in the game and it carries some prominent penalties to all aspects of your economy. Perhaps the penalties need to be even harsher in that regard then. The multiplier for end policies is +3 right now, (3/6/9/12/15 etc) but I may reduce this to +2 (2/4/6/8/10 etc) if Stability is indeed that hard to come by - as it probably is if you're playing on any size map lower than standard, so this is a definite maybe.

On a side-note, city spacing will stay at 2 instead of 3 in NiGHTS. There's simply not enough land to support the Stability required.

Thanks for the feedback

EDIT: Anarchy will be moved to Future Tech. This way it will be right at the end of the game and you wont be able to get more than 2-3 max policies out of it. I'll probably end up removing the Giant Death Robot to make room.

FFFFFFFFf, forgot to save and lost an entire game due to forgetting not to research Dynamite

Please fix this if you can. Any tech that is even remotely connected to Dynamite afterward just crashes the game. Or is there something I can do to fix it?

Fruscainte said:

FFFFFFFFf, forgot to save and lost an entire game due to forgetting not to research Dynamite

Please fix this if you can. Any tech that is even remotely connected to Dynamite afterward just crashes the game. Or is there something I can do to fix it?

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If you have the latest version this shouldn't be a problem. If it is try clearing the cache.

Balerune said:

If you have the latest version this shouldn't be a problem. If it is try clearing the cache.

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This is true. I've never encountered that specific bug in the V.3.

On a side note V.4 will either be released late tonight (pacific time) or sometime tomorrow. It will, again, only be available on Civfanatics as Modbuddy, despite a full re-install of windows, still wont let me log into Gamespy without crashing.

VERSION 4 RELEASED as of Feb 27 6:47pt in Downloads section/Modpacks --> only on CivFanatics.

LIST OF CHANGES + FIXES
-Reminder that the upcoming patch will break the mod. Don't update automatically if you want to keep playing. Steam will reset your settings even if you set them to not update Civ 5 --> Offline mode is the safest route to take. Fixing the mod will take roughly 1-2 weeks.


1. Number Diplomacy 2.0
-Adds over a dozen ways that you can improve your relationships with the AI (will be fully documented in coming days/weeks).
-Introduces a +/- (out of 10) Diplomacy system where your actions all represent numerical hits to your relationship with an AI similar to the model used in CIV 4.
-Numerical Values are VISIBLE next to the reason why an AI likes or dislikes you.
-NOTE: the AI still sometimes displays a status such as FRIENDLY when their mannerisms and numerical evidence suggests otherwise. This is because the AI leaders are coded to come off as DECEPTIVE some of the time. This will be corrected in later updates for more consistent and accurate feedback.
-You can now REQUEST items from the AI and not get punished for your actions.

2. Citizens only require 1 Food instead of 2.
-Growth to support Stability for a larger sized Military and advanced Government was too difficult on any map size lower than standard. Unrest levels for Units and Government will stay at the same level of Version 3. This change also allows units to potentially avoid Despotism and beeline for Monarchy/Feudalism if they plan their moves strategically.
-This also allows your center City tile to level up faster at population levels of 1/6/13/20 and every 7 after that. A well placed city should easily reach +13 population for +13 Stability.

3. Governments from different Era's disable each other.
IE Despotism disables all other Governments, Monarchy/Feudalism disable all other Governments, Theocracy/Oligarchy disable all other Governments, etc. This may seem harsh, but this system only disables the POLICIES and not the bonuses to infrastructure and special Government buildings.
-Ochlocracy (Mob rule) replaces Anarchy as Anarchy will remain unchanged from Vanilla in that it happens when you change between Governments from different Eras. Ochlocracy has also been moved to the Future Era and it now requires +25 Stability to acquire. This is because in Version 3 it was too overpowered in that it's policies (the end policies of all the other Government types) stacked with each other. At the very most you will now only be able to acquire 2-3 of these super-powered policies and only at the end of the game. Ochlocracy also disables all other Governments as it is the only Government introduced in the Future Era.

4. Minor Tweaks and Fixes
-Bartering Policy where you get +1 Gold per 2 Citizens in your capital replaced with a straight up +10% Gold bonus in your Capital. This has been changed because in Version 3 this policy deactivates your City center tile from leveling up any further.
-Tooltip fixes, Government tooltip updates.
-Fix where the Agriculture Tech could only be chosen by hovering the mouse over the lower portion of the button on the Tech Pyramid page.

5. Tech Pyramid UI
-Custom background replacing black background in Version 3.
-Changed Tech color layout and re-sized Tech buttons.

6. Minor AI Tactics Changes
NOTE: The difficulty level of this mod is greater than that of Vanilla Civ. Whatever difficulty you play on Vanilla, you should probably start at least 1-2 levels lower on NiGHTS.
-Tactical AI not quite as defensive as in Version 3.
-AI expands almost twice as fast.
-AI builds wonders at a much faster pace.
-AI will build more tile improvements.

Just tried your mod for the 1st time (v4) and I do no know what to do with the specialists. I have a fur trader and a shepard, and the game gives no indication of what to do with them. I know there are specialist slots that need to be filled, but how do you go about doing that? The in game documentation doesn't shed any light at all on to this. Any help would be appreciated.

You can use the specialists to build "mega improvements". Usually they'll add somewhere around 5 resources to a resource plot. Get your fur trader to a fur plot, and use him for the building and voila, you just got a realy good plot.

So I gave this mod a spin (specifically the version available through the mod download system in game, I didn't see a download link here in the thread).

A few notes and critiques.
I picked up Cannibalism and some other social policies. I couldn't tell if the food bonus was being added to the capital or not. I also had a +20% food bonus from some source or another (Granaries + Despotism? But that's only +10%) but this did not register in any way, not as a listed bonus in the tooltip or an actual bonus in food at turn X and food at turn X+1. So a couple of bugs to look into.

The other civilizations never seemed to attack me. They would bombard me with their cities, but I never noticed being attacked by actual units, even when the odds were strongly in their favor (I had a wounded horseman next to a spear unit and a ship, the ship bombarded the horse but the spearman did not follow through with an attack). Likewise I had no difficulties leaving my catapults where horsemen could run around and kill them, though zones of control may have been enough to make movement impossible. The AI seems to just sit any wounded units still, so an easy way to pin a number of them down would be to alternate between attacking them.

I noticed fur traders do not require an actual improved fur resource as they state, but instead consume a source of fur.

The treatment of specialists looked especially appealing, though it wasn't immediately clear. I couldn't tell if these new specialists were some kind of bonus attached to the city, or a kind of one-time-use workers. I quickly found out it was the latter.

Unfortunately, I strongly disagree with the scaling great people points required to make these specialists. The first couple provide a nice bonus, but the number of GPP required to make each specialist jumps up at an alarming rate. All for relatively minor bonuses. This also makes it nearly impossible to get traditional great people, as they use the same pool. I would suggest these use a separate pool to generate these specialists that stays at a fixed rate. However, if this is the case you may want to rebalance the costs of elite units so they do not come too easily. They looked attractive, but the rising GP costs and not being able to upgrade them makes them not very desirable at all.

I also do not agree with the penalty to roads. The gold penalty for roads is multiplied by effects like the market, which seems counter intuitive. It also encourages building roads and otherwise useless tiles, like desert.

Some of the flat + bonus buildings encourage ICS, like the courthouse in particular. I would recommend tweaking these buildings to be +% or +per pop like the town hall.

All in all, quite interesting and I look forward to seeing how this evolves.

Mylon said:

So I gave this mod a spin (specifically the version available through the mod download system in game, I didn't see a download link here in the thread).

A few notes and critiques.
I picked up Cannibalism and some other social policies. I couldn't tell if the food bonus was being added to the capital or not. I also had a +20% food bonus from some source or another (Granaries + Despotism? But that's only +10%) but this did not register in any way, not as a listed bonus in the tooltip or an actual bonus in food at turn X and food at turn X+1. So a couple of bugs to look into.

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This has been fixed in the latest build of NiGHTS v4. What was happening that the city-center-tile leveling mechanic was interfering with bonuses that were attributed on a per-population basis. These have since been switched to % bonuses.

Mylon said:

The other civilizations never seemed to attack me. They would bombard me with their cities, but I never noticed being attacked by actual units, even when the odds were strongly in their favor (I had a wounded horseman next to a spear unit and a ship, the ship bombarded the horse but the spearman did not follow through with an attack). Likewise I had no difficulties leaving my catapults where horsemen could run around and kill them, though zones of control may have been enough to make movement impossible. The AI seems to just sit any wounded units still, so an easy way to pin a number of them down would be to alternate between attacking them.

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Call it a work in progress on my part at tweaking how the AI functions. In v3 they ended up being far too defensive. I think I've managed to achieve a middle ground in v4 where they wont outright run into slaughter, yet will pick there spots to fight much more readily.

Mylon said:

I noticed fur traders do not require an actual improved fur resource as they state, but instead consume a source of fur.

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True. Someone else pointed this out as well. I'm holding off until the patch is out to address this and any other new specialist issues.

Mylon said:

The treatment of specialists looked especially appealing, though it wasn't immediately clear. I couldn't tell if these new specialists were some kind of bonus attached to the city, or a kind of one-time-use workers. I quickly found out it was the latter.

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In future releases I will add some documentation detailing their functions - whether through the tooltips or the civilopedia.

Mylon said:

Unfortunately, I strongly disagree with the scaling great people points required to make these specialists. The first couple provide a nice bonus, but the number of GPP required to make each specialist jumps up at an alarming rate. All for relatively minor bonuses. This also makes it nearly impossible to get traditional great people, as they use the same pool. I would suggest these use a separate pool to generate these specialists that stays at a fixed rate. However, if this is the case you may want to rebalance the costs of elite units so they do not come too easily. They looked attractive, but the rising GP costs and not being able to upgrade them makes them not very desirable at all.

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Points well taken. Traditional Great People took a backseat while I implemented the new Specialists. I want traditional Great People to be more powerful, less common, but not game-breaking. Future releases will focus more on how they accumulate points and whether or not they become more commonplace. The only thing I can say for sure is that they will remain tied to, and only to, Wonders.

Mylon said:

I also do not agree with the penalty to roads. The gold penalty for roads is multiplied by effects like the market, which seems counter intuitive. It also encourages building roads and otherwise useless tiles, like desert.

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I may tweak the values so that roads only affect production/food/gold on harsher terrain while leaving farms/pastures/camps for the most part unaffected. Upgrading to Railroads/Dynamite would then alleviate the penalties to roads in harsher terrain like hills.

Mylon said:

Some of the flat + bonus buildings encourage ICS, like the courthouse in particular. I would recommend tweaking these buildings to be +% or +per pop like the town hall.

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I've not changed any buildings in v4 as the patch will end up doing that for me and will take quite some tinkering to document and fix. I'm always looking to avoid the ICS strategy so I will take a look at these flat bonus buildings. Most likely they will either be +per pop or a bonus based on local terrain.

Mylon said:

All in all, quite interesting and I look forward to seeing how this evolves.

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The latest build is in the Downloads section of Civfanatics and adds some new features to the mix. Have a look

markusbeutel said:

Points well taken. Traditional Great People took a backseat while I implemented the new Specialists. I want traditional Great People to be more powerful, less common, but not game-breaking. Future releases will focus more on how they accumulate points and whether or not they become more commonplace. The only thing I can say for sure is that they will remain tied to, and only to, Wonders.

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I don't have a problem with wonders being the only means to generate great people. It merely bugs me that generating shepherds or elite archers delays my ability to generate great people.

As for the bug with cannibalism, I would recommend you change the "level up" mechanic you have for the city plot. This mechanic is identical in every way to the +1 per X pop already in place. How about every city gets a free building on founding (the "Cornerstone") that provides a per-pop bonus to production, food, and gold of 15 or 14. Thus, for every ~6-7 population, it's a +1 bonus to each. This way you can still keep cannibalism and similar mechanics in as they were. This isn't quite the same as +1 per 7, but it should be plenty.

I'd be careful about adjusting the food required per pop to 1. I did that way back in the days of SMAC and it got kinda silly. If you want cities to grow faster, try adjusting the formula used for food-required-for-next-population. As I understand the formula is relatively steep, making growing past 15 fairly slow. As it stands, growth follows a progression of rapid expansion as more and more food tiles can be worked and are improved, but once those tiles are fully improved and all are worked, growth is being cut from two ends by a polynomial function AND from a reduced food income at the same time. I'm fairly certain the linear function of past Civ games was just fine given how the amount of surplus food also decreased at the same time.

Mylon said:

I don't have a problem with wonders being the only means to generate great people. It merely bugs me that generating shepherds or elite archers delays my ability to generate great people.

As for the bug with cannibalism, I would recommend you change the "level up" mechanic you have for the city plot. This mechanic is identical in every way to the +1 per X pop already in place. How about every city gets a free building on founding (the "Cornerstone") that provides a per-pop bonus to production, food, and gold of 15 or 14. Thus, for every ~6-7 population, it's a +1 bonus to each. This way you can still keep cannibalism and similar mechanics in as they were. This isn't quite the same as +1 per 7, but it should be plenty.

I'd be careful about adjusting the food required per pop to 1. I did that way back in the days of SMAC and it got kinda silly. If you want cities to grow faster, try adjusting the formula used for food-required-for-next-population. As I understand the formula is relatively steep, making growing past 15 fairly slow. As it stands, growth follows a progression of rapid expansion as more and more food tiles can be worked and are improved, but once those tiles are fully improved and all are worked, growth is being cut from two ends by a polynomial function AND from a reduced food income at the same time. I'm fairly certain the linear function of past Civ games was just fine given how the amount of surplus food also decreased at the same time.

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I'm not actually getting rid of cannibalism - just changing it to a % yield along with a couple of other policies. In the long run I don't see this as a major issue because in v4, Government's from different eras disable each other so any per-pop benefits gained from Despotism would probably not be long-lasting and worth the effort. These per-pop benefits actually don't really work well in the new model and an immediate short-term boost to food and gold is a better option I would think. As far as switching to a free-building mechanic, I did think about doing that, but now with 1 Food required per citizen, growth in cities will approach 20-30+ for a well placed city and I feel leveling up a city square feels like more of a reward than the vanilla building per pop bonuses. I also like how upon initially settling a city you get an immediate bonus based on your city placement. For this reason alone I wouldn't want to change it, at least for now.

As for past Civ games, food just wasn't as important as it currently is in NiGHTS where your stability/happiness depends on it. Previous players of v3 felt that unrest/unhappiness costs were too high and I agreed with that, especially on smaller maps and faster game speeds where food wasn't as plentiful. Then again, if more people feel the change to food is too much I may revert to a more linear-based model. I have tested it to some extent and expansion doesn't feel overly excessive. I'll have to wait for feedback on players' exp and if Stability is now too common-place and easy to come by late game. As for GP, the mechanic of veteran units and new specialists cutting into GP's earned from Wonders was a planned mechanism. I don't want the player to able to easily get whatever unit they want. The rate for GP at the moment is a little to slow, though, and this will be tweaked in a post-patch update.

Thanks for the feedback Critiques are always welcome.

Bastian-Bux said:

You can use the specialists to build "mega improvements". Usually they'll add somewhere around 5 resources to a resource plot. Get your fur trader to a fur plot, and use him for the building and voila, you just got a realy good plot.

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What happens if you don't have a fur plot anywhere near any of your cities? In this example, what good would the fur trader be? What can I do with him if I cannot use him to improve his desired plot? A little better documentation would be helpful here.

GoUtes53 said:

What happens if you don't have a fur plot anywhere near any of your cities? In this example, what good would the fur trader be? What can I do with him if I cannot use him to improve his desired plot? A little better documentation would be helpful here.

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I'll document this better in future updates. Basically that's why I've put up warnings on the cover thread to set all specialists to manual or you'll end up wasting a potential specialist. What I'll probably end up doing is coding the game so that it starts with the "manual specialist" box checked to avoid any unwanted specialists.