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NiGHTS
NiGHTS TECH TREE: ANCIENT -> RENAISSANCE ERA
"Why Civilization NiGHTS?" is a question I'm often asked . I guess the easiest answer to this is that the difference between vanilla CIV V, and this mod - is like day and night. Virtually every aspect of vanilla CIV V has been changed to some extent - so much so that this should feel more like an entirely new game of Civilization, and not just a mod that adds a few things here and there. For people new to NiGHTS, here's a brief introduction to most of the major changes and why they were implemented.
Happiness
Citizens generate +1 Happiness instead of +1 Unhappiness, Military Units generate +5 Unhappiness, Cities cost +20 Unhappiness when constructed, and improved Luxury resources grant +10 Happiness. Until you actually try the mod, these numbers - at face value - probably seem absurd, but there's a method to the madness.
I go more in depth about why these changes were made in a game design blog posted here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=437994 - but suffice to say that the main reason for these changes was to add an element of choice back into the game, especially in the early eras. With Happiness serving as a global limiter, each City had lost an element of what made it unique from past CIV games, (with the removal of health/pollution playing a role in this as well). When you factor in the reduced yields from tile improvements, and a streamlined Tech Tree with essentially 3 paths - games can begin to feel rather repetitive. Piled on top of all of this are negative Happiness thresholds that punish your empire as a whole - (which can generally be avoided by building the same Happiness buildings and adopting the same Happiness policies in every game with little deviation).
Unhappiness has always been tied to Citizens, but now that Happiness was global, it didn't really feel right to me - almost as if the whole system was somehow less than the sum of it's parts. Tying a set Unhappiness amount, (+5), to Military Units and having Citizens generate +1 Happiness gives incentive to continually grow your empire, (and avoid ever having to use a halt growth button), in order to support both expansion, and armament.
Increased Unhappiness attributed to new Cities offsets this new source of automatic Citizen Happiness, and additional Happiness derived from luxury improvements heightens the sense of reward obtained from working terrain. All of this ties together to form a new, unique Happiness system that enables NiGHTS to feel like an entirely new version of Civilization - one that I hope you'll give a try.
Expansion
It should be noted that the AI expands at a rate much closer to that found in CIV III and CIV IV. Scouting out City locations, fog-busting Barbarian camps, and boxing off the AI when possible are all valuable early game techniques that will need to be mastered - as the AI will end up attempting to do the same towards you. The AI's focus on expansion in the early game offsets their reduced frequency to initiate early DOW's and encourages early trading of luxury resources. This has been altered to both help the AI, and to engage the human player with increased difficulty - as the AI usually loses these early conflicts - and it's generally much more difficult to expand effectively than to just create early era military units. The AI's rate of expansion has been scaled across all difficulty levels, so if you're having problems matching/exceeding their expansion, a lower difficulty level would serve you well.
Policies
Where Civics were flexible, Policies are permanent - and there's nothing wrong with this, as each offers up interesting choices throughout the course of a game. Tying the amount of these policy branches you unlock to a specified victory type was a mistake. Part of the re-playability found in all previous CIV games, was that you never felt like you were tied to any particular victory type. Games could adapt - where all at once you could revert from playing a cultural game, and instead focus on building up your military. NiGHTS removes this victory type, and also unlocks all Policy branches at the start of a game. The total amount of Policy branches has been reduced to 7 from 10, but each branch now offers anywhere from 12-15 sub-policies. Individually, these branches come across as more like expanded Policy trees, with each branch offering up bonuses akin to different and varied play-styles.
Cultural Revolutions
Whichever Civilization builds the games first Wonder undergoes a Cultural Revolution which allows them to adopt a Government type, (that grants them temporary bonuses which last for 5/10/15/20 turns, depending on what their game-speed setting is when they started the mod). From this point on, every Civilization that builds a Wonder at any point during the game is in the running for a Cultural Revolution, (which are limited to 1 at a time world-wide). If you've built a wonder, your total accumulated Culture is compared against that of all other Civilizations who have also constructed at least 1 World Wonder. A countdown begins at this point, and whoever attains a certain amount of culture first, (the exact number varies based on game-speed, map size, difficulty level), undergoes a Cultural Revolution, and the choice of which Government type to adopt, (initially 5, but expanded up to 20 through policy choices which unlock more). Each Wonder you build boosts your Culture total that's tabulated by the Revolutions mechanic by +5%, and each Cultural City-State you befriend adds an additional +10% to this total.
It should also be noted that Civ's that lose out on the current Cultural Revolution retain accumulated Culture, which ensures that all Civ's at a certain point will undergo a Revolution.
Improvements
All Improvements generate a +3 yield to their underlaying resource. This is in order to add some variety back to the terrain and encourage dynamic city placement, and it really puts a premium back on growing your cities. Combined with how important it is to increase the amount of Citizens in your Empire for the automatic Happiness boost they now provide, this further adds an additional layer of choices to the game, (beyond that of simply getting Happiness from luxury resources). At the same time, each luxury resource now provides +10 Happiness, which can either fund the construction of +2 Military Units, (which generate +5 Unhappiness each to offset the gains from the luxury), or provide half the amount of Happiness needed to build a new City, (which costs +20 Unhappiness). Balancing military expansion with actual land acquisition is one of the main balancing acts that plays out in a game of NiGHTS.
The Tech Tree
The Tech Tree has been greatly expanded, with multiple branching paths, dead ends, and Tech's that have either/or prerequisites, (signified in the UI with a science icon). Again, this is all about increasing the the amount of choice a player has in regards to what Tech paths will help him/her the most at any given moment. The UI has been altered so that almost 6 rows of Tech's are visible at any point on the lowest screen resolutions compared to the almost 4 available in vanilla CIV V. This isn't a Tech Tree that's going to hold your hand and converge at a future point to ensure you're playing the game the way I want you to play the game, as it's not me that's shaping your empire's history after all.
Each Tech offers up a minimum of 3 builds/abilities for you to choose from, and none of these are redundant or useless - as every single unit and building in the game has been re-imagined to be as unique to any given game as possible. The individual era's have also been lengthened so that units and buildings from each of these era's have a set time period in which to flourish. It's literally impossible to research 1-2 tech's and be done with an era - as I've created the tree so that you will more or less enter and exit each one at an appropriate timeframe in regards to human history.
An overall economy has also been created to accompany these eras. In the Ancient/Classical Era, your main source of income will be provided through luxury improvements, which will carry you into the Medieval Ages - at which point you will start to struggle with increased army/building costs until you hit the Renaissance, where your empire will begin to truly become magnificent. This financial windfall will carry you into the Industrial Era, and you'll need every penny saved to fund your first factories and hospitals until you get to the Modern Age, where building/policy combinations will end up making the brunt of your aggregate economy.
Each of these mechanics is talked about in more detail in the dedicated topic posts below - but by taking all of the above into account, you should be well on your way to figuring out how to go about tackling your first game of NiGHTS.
congrats.
