General Compatability Errors

[NotErich]

I'm trying to resolve some issues i've been having, not just in one scenario but multiple times with multiple different mods. They should work together, and they do, but some UI aspect will effectively make the save unplayable. Sometimes it is production, sometimes research, but more often, it is less detectable things that happen rarely or later in game, like free policies/techs/great persons. They all involve that UI slot, though, so I assume they are relatively related.

What I want to know, is how I can remedy this. General compatibility issues isn't something that i've been able to find on the forums. I also know that i'm probably going to have to edit/merge something, so that isn't a dealbreaker for me.

Additionally, if possible, i'd like to know if there is some sort of loading log that I can access or implement when loading mods, so that I could not get 1/4th of a way through the game and have to ditch the save.

 

[Spatzimaus]

The answer to most of your question boils down to a problem with one simple statement:

They should work together, and they do

If they did, then we wouldn't be having this conversation. Just because two mods (or a mod and a scenario, or a mod and a map script, or a out-of-date mod and the updated version of the core game) don't immediately crash your game and cause your computer to burst into flames doesn't mean they actually do work together. Incompatibilities can be far more subtle than that, and in fact usually are. Yes, you might be able to go a little ways in-game before you see anything noticeably wrong, but that's not the same as saying they worked together. It'd be like saying that if my car's engine explodes when I go above 60mph, then it was working fine for several weeks of local driving up until it went boom; no, it was broken all along, you just didn't see the effects of its brokenness until you tried going on the highway.

Any mods that try to edit the same UI window will not be compatible, period. Likewise, any two mods that add new unit graphics or alter existing ones are not compatible. Two mods or map scripts that alter resource allocation (including adding a new resource) will be purely incompatible. And so on. For anything other than GameData XML and SQL, a mod needs to replace the original file in its entirety, which by definition means that two mods can't both apply their changes to the original. The game will simply use one of the two, depending on load order, and ignore the other. If the ignored one did something important, you'll see problems right away, but if the differences are minor then it might be a while before something breaks.

If you have this sort of conflict, there's not really anything you can do about it except not try to use those mods together any more. It's theoretically possible to reconcile the two, but merging two disparate version of a core game file can be VERY complicated, and you're likely to break it badly in the process.

Now, it's also possible for two mods involving purely XML or SQL updates to be incompatible, especially if the mods add new elements (notably text keys). It's just far less likely, and much easier to fix.

Additionally, if possible, i'd like to know if there is some sort of loading log that I can access or implement when loading mods, so that I could not get 1/4th of a way through the game and have to ditch the save.

Your game has a "Logs" directory. Inside it, the game creates files called things like "Database.log", "Lua.log" and "xml.log". Those'll contain many of these issues, but not all of them. If two mods each attempt to modify the same UI window, for instance, there'll be no error message at all, because neither mod actually did anything incorrect. And the vanilla game generates a few errors and warnings in each of these logs, so you should see what they look like when no mods are loaded to know what's "normal" in a mod's errors.

Now, if those files aren't being created, it's because you never bothered to turn logging on. Go into your game's config.ini file and change EnableTuner, LoggingEnabled, and anything else with "log" in the name that looks even remotely useful, from a 0 to a 1.

 

[PawelS]

They should work together

Why do you think so? Generally mods that change the same UI elements won't work together, because UI files are replaced by the mod's files, you can't add things to them like to the GameData database. So, to remedy the conflict, you should merge these changes somehow - compare the version of a file used by mod 1 to the original file, then the one used by mod 5, and try to create a file with changes from both mods.

Edit: Spatz explained it better

 

[Spatzimaus]

Edit: Spatz explained it better

But in a much, much longer way. When I read my own posts, even I end up in a tl;dr situation sometimes. (I type very quickly, so it's really easy to get carried away.)

 

[NotErich]

Well, thanks for the answer(s). And, that should have been "don't work together". Additionally, I generally prefer the longer answer because it will usually explain the problem, rather than simply telling you what to do. I suppose I have enough knowledge of what to do from here from toying around with mods from Civ 4, if nothing drastic has been changed from then.

 

[Spatzimaus]

And, that should have been "don't work together".

While that does make the statement a bit clearer, the part that we were objecting to was the "should" part. The simple fact is, most mods of any decent size are just not going to work together unless their creators specifically worked to make them compatible, and unless you've gone through every file in each mod to ensure two aren't trying to modify the same thing, you're just not in a position to know that they should be compatible. It's not just about you, a LOT of people do this; they download several disparate mods, and on the surface you'd think that they wouldn't conflict because they seem to be doing completely different things, but our point is that that's still no guarantee of compatibility because of how everything is structured internally.

This was especially common in the first few months after the game's release. With VFS defaulting to true at the time, and most early mods adding Lua functionality through edits of InGame.xml, nearly every major mod was incompatible with nearly every other mod. Things have improved somewhat since then, but it's still fairly common to have multiple mods adjusting the same components.
For instance, take AssignStartingPlots.lua. This is the file that handles all of the resource distribution on the map, figures out the starting locations, and adjusts for starting region biases. It does a lot of stuff, and it's all in a single file. So a mod that adds new resources would conflict with a map script that tries to skew the resource balance (like the Great Plains, Highlands, and Lakes map scripts), as well as mods that change how city-states are placed. There are even a few mods out there that ensure an ice-free channel along the poles, and it'd conflict with those as well.
Or TopPanel. I have a mod that adds a new yield; I need to edit TopPanel to display it. I have a different mod that adds a strategic resource that also adds Happiness, and I needed to edit TopPanel just because the game wouldn't list it under the strategics. And so on. Many of the key UI elements (TopPanel, CityView, UnitPanel, SocialPolicyPopup) get modified by a lot of mods in the course of making other changes work correctly.

So what we were trying to say is that unless you made the mods in question, don't go into it expecting them to work together just because the descriptions didn't seem to overlap.