NiGHTS: General Discussion

[markusbeutel]

FYI The current v.5 version is incompatible with Info Addict. Is there a possible fix?

Last I noticed the mod was still compatible with infoaddict - has infoaddict been updated lately? Have you cleared your cache/moduserdata folders?

Two problems, one game-breaking --- sorry if they've already been reported. Am playing on a 2009 MacBook Pro and no mods other than Civ Nights, which I just downloaded.

1. I can't choose construction projects for my cities, making it impossible to end my first turn. At first, this seemed to be because I began without any technologies, including Agriculture, and didn't have any buildings to build --- but then I tried verifying the game cache with Steam and starting a new game, and I began with Agriculture but still could not choose a construction project.

2. Technology names are displaying incorrectly, all beginning with a string that is something like "TXT_KEY_TECH_[actual name]". This makes the tech tree harder to read but is manageable.

As I said, I tried verifying the cache, but to little avail. Are these known problems I can fix? If not, any chance of a bug fix for a Mac issue? I am really eager to try Civ Nights; it sounds like a great take on Civ V.

--

EDIT: I should also note that I'm playing with G&K and (I think) all DLC enabled --- I got G&K on a Steam sale about a month ago and only got around to reinstalling Civ V on my computer last week; thus, I'm fairly sure my copy of Civ V is as up-to-date as it can be on a Mac.

I'm assuming this is in fact because you're playing on a Mac - and while it may be up to date - it's probably not as up to date as the PC version of the game. Has anyone else had any experience playing on a Mac lately?

Other than that, make sure you're not playing with any other mods - civilization mods especially as these won't start with any techs as they'd have to be customized mods for Nights itself in order to start with any of the new techs.

I have an issue with the tech tree where I get the full file name too: TXT_KEY_TECH_....

Also my policy screen is just 5 large colour blocks

Lots of things could be causing these bugs. First make sure you game is up to date through Steam, then clear the contents (ie delete the contents) of your CIV V cache and moduserdata folders, make sure you only have one copy of the mod installed, and that you aren't using any other mods (manually delete or move other mods out of your CIV V mods folder - as deleting in-game doesn't always actually delete them from the folder).

Like everyone is saying, AI tech is crazy right now. Some one just finished Brandenburg gate, getting the tech would be 53 turns out for me, and they are finishing a wonder for it. Are they some how getting the old research agreement bonus's that players were getting a few patches ago?

Was it always a requirement to have a world wonder to have a cultural revolution? This really exasperates the AI lead, because on harder difficulties you are not getting a wonder until at least the middle of the game.

They aren't getting any RA/bug bonus - although on higher difficulties AI do start off with production bonuses (including a free worker) which can make getting early wonders challenging, but not insurmountable. And yes, you need at least 1 wonder in order to start accruing points towards a cultural revolution. Your best bet would be to adopt one of the policies that grants a free worker and/or speeds up wonder production, all the while making sure to chop forests/jungles diligently when building them for the production bonus.

I have changed my play style to be much more aggressive in the early to mid game, while I still have my tech edge (or at least parity), because the game usually turns hopeless once the AI snowballs. But that only works on maps where there's no insulated AI with good resources.

This is a longshot, but I'll toss it out there anyway: It has bothered me from the start that there are no diplomatic penalties for using nukes. Any chance NiGHTS could address that? It's especially troublesome when the AI is building nuclear missiles before I can even start the Manhattan Project.

If you can't tone down nuclear war, maybe you could at least introduce a defensive unit or building or wonder (like Patriot missiles or a Reaganesque Star Wars shield)...although that doesn't help much if the AI is way out in front.

AFAIK, didn't G+K's introduce additional diplo penalties for nuking? Are you playing vanilla?

Thanks guys, that was it. But now I'm getting another problem where my games seem to crash on exactly the same turn. One game it crashed on turn 42, another game I made it to turn 138, but both those games are now unplayable :/. Any ideas?

Are you playing with any other mods enabled? I ask because there are certain xml functions that other mods might implement that cause crashes as certain xml tags have changed and/or don't function properly over the course of CIV V's patching process.

Also make sure to delete the contents of your CIV V cache and moduserdata folders - as info from previously installed mods gets stored in here and cause conflicts/crashes with Nights.

 

[markusbeutel]

Sorry again for my disappearing act these past few months everyone. I meant to get an update released over the Christmas break but ran into a few family emergencies and events that ate up most of my free time and now I'm back in school again for a new semester. I am, however, still working on an update (that doesn't have an ETA at this point) but at the very least it's a work in progress so keep the bug reports coming in and hopefully I'll get them included in a future release.

There's also a good chance I'll release an AI update before a major release update that addresses the rate of AI tech pace, as this has been a constant complaint and represents a rather easy fix on my end - at the same time I don't want to make the mod too easy. Are people still finding the AI techs too fast in the mid/late game? And when does this usually occur?

Finally, having been away from the modding scene for awhile now, have there been any community mods that have been released these last few months that people feel would be a worthy inclusion into Nights that I should be looking at?

 

[erithrius]

Are you playing with any other mods enabled? I ask because there are certain xml functions that other mods might implement that cause crashes as certain xml tags have changed and/or don't function properly over the course of CIV V's patching process.

Also make sure to delete the contents of your CIV V cache and moduserdata folders - as info from previously installed mods gets stored in here and cause conflicts/crashes with Nights.

I am playing with only this mod enabled. I have deleted the contents of those folders already, and indeed had to before the mod started working at all. Can you think of any other reason why this would be happening? I just crashed out again, this time at turn 45. Something about the early-mid 40s turns my computer doesn't like... Also I have tried updating my graphics card to the newest version, then to the newest beta version, neither of which worked.

EDIT: Now I can play it with DirectX 9, but it crashes every couple turns. No longer on any specific turn, but very frequently.
Things I have tried: deleting local content and reinstalling; tried playing in directx 9 and directx 10/11; deleting cache folder contents and moduserdata folder contents then verifying integrity through Steam.

Can anyone help me solve this problem? I don't understand why this is happening, at all.

 

[LanguishViking]

When accepting peace offers from the AI which include cities which I then choose to raze I am unable to build. Saving and reloading provides a workaround and you can build that courthouse as you burn the city down.

Regarding game balance especially Ancient vs Renaissance.

I usually quit by the renaissance because by that time I either dominate totally or I am overrun and dead or dying.

To keep up with the AI while civilizing I have to spend all my happiness on cities. The AI has a big bonus both in happiness and in speed of improvements due to embassy. They don't need as much happiness to build cities and build units and they improve luxuries and regular terrain faster. I assume they also grow cities faster since they usually manage to out grow me routinely with trading posts against my farms. The ancient AI also has a lot of money. Recently I made peace with Egypt where they provided me with 35 money per turn from their three size 5-7 cities. My three size 2-5 cities were earning me 26 total, they were running a 106 profit. Assuming they had similar expenses their three cities were producing an average of 9 money per citizen, mine were producing 2,6.

Now I'm not complaining, I still win most of the time, but this suggests a problem. The AI has more than enough money to buy whatever it wants and does. It buys three or four settlers pretty quickly and then stops, moddable AI settings prevent it from building more. So at that point it buys units, lots of them. They improve their local terrain much faster than me since they quickly build a worker and their worker works twice as fast (effect of embassy building iirc).

At this point the AI starts diplomatizing and half the countries in the world go and murder one civ by attacking all at once with their horde of warriors and archers. If this target is me that means game over and I'm dead or dying if they manage to arrive simultaneously. If I can recover between hordes they offer me cities and masses of money for peace when they are 30 tiles away and I haven't come close. If I can join this "kill someone early" plot then I win. I get left alone until the renaissance. I can build my small combined arms strike force (to reduce upgrade costs, I love the progressive upgrade costs feature) usually three inf, three cav, three archers and three siege up to high levels of experience giving the inf cover and march, the cav move and sight, the archers range and double firing and siege range and double firing.

At that point it I am blowing up with happiness (200-500 excess on standard maps) and as long as I avoid building the those high cost reneissance buildings I can keep up in science.

I can't help feeling that at the higher difficulty levels what decides victory from defeat is if I join the right plot early on.

My suggestions are as follows

Reduce that AI early cash flow, not only is it too heavy but it is also exploitable (peace for money). Early on the player is in no position to attack the ai. In the case of the early ai headshot either the player has the resources to stop it or the player doesn't, skill isn't really an issue. It is very very annoying to lose the game because japan showed up 100 turns into the game with 20 plus units on your doorstep.

Scale happiness cost for units. Warriors 2 happiness, Swordsmen 4, Longswordmen 6, Musketeers 8, Riflemen 10, Infantry 12, Mech Inf 14. This might open up the option of having barbarian recruits cost happiness as well. One of my normal exploits here is to keep all those early recruited warriors as garrisons in cities behind the lines for garrison duty, they cost virtually nothing both in cash and happiness and count the same as advanced units for determining army size. This means that you can deploy reasonably large armies at all times and prevent the irrelevance of happiness in the renaissance.

Use the same formula for recruiting barbarians from camps as ships do. If at the same time you can massively increase the amount of barbarians around and possibly reducing the loot from camps as well you can also solve the colony planting of the ai on the other side of the continent especially right next to my city and raging barbarians can provide a more nuanced punishment for not having enough soliders than being invaded by 20 plus units from each civ. Personally my best civ experiences are on raging barbarians since I need to send an army to escort the settlers and beat off a barbarians horde to found a new city. Historically civs didn't fight unless they bordered, that 20 unit horde invading from 40 tiles away won't happen if there are 40 barbarians between us in the FOW.

Reduce the maintenance cost of buildings. Before I actually looked at the cost of buildings I was routinely going bankrupt by the renaissance. The ancient, classical and medieval buildings are cheap to maintain 1-5 ducats. Once you hit the renaissance buildings they cost 10-15. A civ that put 20+ warriors and archers in the field with 15 population can't manage the same number of musketmen with 150 population. I think this is because the AI runs out of cash. I can see it through diplomacy. I'm not building 10 ducat maintenance buildings and the are, I have much more cash. This combined with an exponential growth in purchase and recruitment costs means the ai can no longer pay for anything and has to build it. RAs are cheaper the infantry so the infantry don't get bought. Typically I build inns in all cities once I can upgrade them to guilds and once the guild is built I trash the inn. Fancy knights are cool, but not worth the 10 ducat per turn maintenance cost for the buildings. Having a cash flow of 1000ish per turn is worth much more than a few extra percentage points on production or culture.


I just find it a bit baffling that AI armies get SMALLER as time goes one.

I'd also repeat my suggestion that labeling the government related wonders will help as well and either reducing the build costs of those wonders so you can build them within the golden age length or creating a "foundation" building with nominal cost which is activated by the government instead of the wonder has minimal maintenence cost and no features other than allowing the wonder to be built. So rather than trying to find a city that can build the tower of babel in 20 turns you build the foundation during the government and then can take more than 20 turns to build the wonder.

 

[Ironrod]

AFAIK, didn't G+K's introduce additional diplo penalties for nuking? Are you playing vanilla?

Well, I'm not playing Civ at all anymore due to my frustration with the runaway AI tech. And my games usually end before nukes become common, so I have limited experience with advanced warfare. In my last game, though, both of my major AI rivals were lobbing nukes at me as fast as they could build them -- and before I could even complete the Manhattan Project -- without any reaction from the remaining minor AIs. There were no consequences at all that I could see.

As to when the AI tech breakout happens...I usually notice that the AI is building riflemen while I'm struggling to introduce musketeers. By the time I get riflemen my enemies are building bombers and tanks. Once they open up that lead they also vacuum up all of the late-game wonders, which just widens the gap.

Glad to see that you're still plugging away at NiGHTS, btw. Hope you can get a new version out before I get bored with X-Com.

 

[erithrius]

I'm still having random crashes with this mod, specifically. I followed the installation instructions to the letter, have no other mods installed (nor am I even subscribed to any), updated directx and my graphics card, yet am still crashing, now on turns 12-18.

And it IS the mod - I played unmodded civ and got up to turn 88 with no problems.

Does anyone know how I can solve this? I really like this mod, but it would be great to get past turn 20 :/

 

[markusbeutel]

I'm still having random crashes with this mod, specifically. I followed the installation instructions to the letter, have no other mods installed (nor am I even subscribed to any), updated directx and my graphics card, yet am still crashing, now on turns 12-18.

And it IS the mod - I played unmodded civ and got up to turn 88 with no problems.

Does anyone know how I can solve this? I really like this mod, but it would be great to get past turn 20 :/

What are your computer specs? I have noticed that the mod (and all mods for that matter) are prone to crash if you barely meet the minimum specs for the game. The mod itself shouldn't be causing crashes (and you're the only one reporting crashes) so I tend to err on the side that it's something to do with your setup and not the mod itself or I'd be inundated with crash reports.

 

[markusbeutel]

Quick update

While I'm still actively working on an update, I'll also be releasing parts of the mod by piecemeal over the next few weeks, so that if you just want to play the base game with the tech tree from Nights, or the base game with just the policies from Nights, you'll be able to do this.

 

[erithrius]

Markus,
Here are my computer specs:

Vista 32-bit

Intel Core 2 quad CPU "Q6600 @ 2.40GHz 2.39 GHz" (that's what it says)
Motherboard: Dell DXP061
Video Card: GeForce 9800GT
RAM: 4 GB
Hard drive: 300GB Samsung Drive & 2 TB drive
Intel gigabit network connection

Anything in there not look good? I think the RAM looks a little low, but the regular game works fine so I don't know if that's it.

 

[manarod]

i'd like to suggest a thing. the policy that increase the drop rate of influence of cs is just too powerfull. I play with 13 civs and every civ picked that policy. The drop rate for my cs is now -2.30. isn't a little too much? In vanilla g&k that isn'thappening because policies are less and have more investiment

 

[Balerune]

Quick update

While I'm still actively working on an update, I'll also be releasing parts of the mod by piecemeal over the next few weeks, so that if you just want to play the base game with the tech tree from Nights, or the base game with just the policies from Nights, you'll be able to do this.

Good to hear. Hope your other personal issues also resolve happily.

I've tried other mods (CEP) which don't suffer the research problems which always occur midgame and make it a game breaker but in CEP the AI always goes for domination; I haven't won a game any other way so I don't know if it is something basic in Nights or in the general civ game.

Anyway if you pull off what you said (mod in parts) that would be positive.

 

[kiol]

Congratulations for making such a great mode, it really does enhance the game.

I'm having problems viewing the social policies. while it doesnt affect the gameplay, its takes the feel away.



Is there a way to fix this? I'm using a Macbook Pro. Everything else is working fine.

 

[markusbeutel]

Congratulations for making such a great mode, it really does enhance the game.

I'm having problems viewing the social policies. while it doesnt affect the gameplay, its takes the feel away.



Is there a way to fix this? I'm using a Macbook Pro. Everything else is working fine.

Bugs like this usually occur if you've installed other mods at some point and haven't been clearing out your cache/ModUserData folders. Delete the contents of those, make sure you don't have any other mods running along with Nights, (especially any mods that affect the policies screen), and that visual bug should go away so you get the proper backgrounds.

 

[CvsC]

Hi evrybody. Got some issues from mylast game. The last two policies of the commerce tree not work. its the cost on roads removement - nothing happend. and the one you should get a great merchant and some gold bonus. dont know if the gold bonus is working but you dont get a free merchant. and my ironclads got 7 or 6 movepoints (thought i gave him a movement promotion )
And why have you removed the great temple nationalwonder?
Thats all for now, Great Mod Markus !

BTW If you choose DesertFolklore you gain 2 faith instead of 1 per D-tile. Dont know if its on purpose and just the description is wrong but I like it.

 

[Ironrod]

In light of the announcement about the Brave New World expansion, has work on NiGHTS stopped?

I quit playing it a few weeks ago due to the AI tech balance issue but have been checking in periodically in the hope of seeing some progress. GEM is a good mod, too, but not nearly as comprehensive as NiGHTS.

 

[ilshur]

How could i manually alter the G&K NiGHTS to do the following:

Remove technology requirements for cultural policies
Remove populations influence on science output from cities (outside of structure improvements)
Double or triple marathon multiplier of times


Thanks

 

[mazzone92]

Ok, so i really want to play this mod, but its not working

In the first turn, after i build a city and have to change de production, i click the button and nothing happens. Also, the tech names are all strange, like 'TXT_KEY_TYPE' whatever. How do i fix this?

I installed civ5 again after some time now and i just use info addict and legions mod. I disabled them and tried to play only the Civ Nights mod, but there is still the same problem

i just installed G&K enhanced mod and unofficial patch and the production button problem was the same... how can i solve this?

 

[tomtom5858]

Ok, so i really want to play this mod, but its not working

In the first turn, after i build a city and have to change de production, i click the button and nothing happens. Also, the tech names are all strange, like 'TXT_KEY_TYPE' whatever. How do i fix this?

I installed civ5 again after some time now and i just use info addict and legions mod. I disabled them and tried to play only the Civ Nights mod, but there is still the same problem

i just installed G&K enhanced mod and unofficial patch and the production button problem was the same... how can i solve this?

Try loading up another game with it. If that doesn't fix it, clear those files, and re-download the mods. I believe that's an issue with corruption, but I'm not sure.

 

[G.I.Joe]

Hey everyone,
I'm playing nights right now and I thought I would ask a quick question. Why do ai civilizations give me all cities except their capital when they ask for peace, and why do they not ever negotiate for peace before the point of no return? Is it something that has been altered or is it an interesting side effect of something else?

 

[Pozhinat]

Fixed