NiGHTS: General Discussion

I loaded up your NiGHTS mod last night and I must say that it's wicked fun. I do have a few gripes though. Maybe it was just the map that I got (because I like playng with abundant resources turned on), or maybe I wasn't quite expecting the population growth that I ended up getting, or whatever, but my capital ended up with an all grassland area, aside from three hills and a few ocean tiles, consisting of a sheep, three or four cows, and three or four cotton. Now, I know happiness is not an issue as far as population is concerned, because, of course, population gives happiness which is then used to field a military, but my god, my capital was growing ridiculously fast, though it took a rather long time to build anything in it. Now, the population isn't necessarilly where I have my gripe, but the lack of anything useful for them to do, in some cases) is. I made sure to turn on manual specialists, so as not to have any undesirable sorts popping up, but my population ended up growing much faster than my borders, so in many cases, I had many nonspecialized citizen.. specialists (you know, the ones who only give you +1 :c5production: and no GPP).

I do like the new specialists, the way they give you the feel of building your empire up over time instead of hitting one special technology and you've suddenly got a huge influx of this or that coming in empire wide. However, these new specialists have the ability to not only build their special improvements (such as the cotton farm or the wheat thinggy or whatever), but they also have the ability to build roads and even settle new cities. Were these intended actions for them?

Some of the buildings had.. odd combinations of things that they did, like, if I wanted X specialist for Y Resource I had to build Z building that gave a bonus to some other resource completely unrelated to the resource that I wanted to improve, or I simply couldn't even build that building because it had some obscure restriction for where it could be built. Also, a few maintencance costs seemed to be a bit off on a few of them. for example, one that give a flat +5 :c5production: that cost no maintenance, and a situational +1production to forests only that had a maintenance cost of 5 (not so worth it if you want to build only one or two lumbermills in a city that doesn't have much production otherwise.

Another thing is that the AI don't seem to know what to do with the new specialist types. I didn't see any of the special new improvements in any of the AIs lands. Because of my Cow heavy start and the super cow pastures from the associated specialist type, my science took off and I was far ahead of the AI, while usually on King Difficulty, I am not (or at least not until much later than when I got my initial tech lead).

I suppose I could play with standard resources and see how that goes, but I still get the feeling that unless I start with a very poor starting location I'll still probably jump ahead in tech more quickly than I would on a normal game.

Also, since there is really no limiting factor on population growth, and each city only gives 2 unhappiness, you only take a hit of one unhappiness by settling a new city, so there's really no incentive to not REX aggressively, especially if you pick up Monarchy.

Also, I have a few questoins about building that do things like give Golden Age Length +10% or increase worker speed by X%. How exactly do those work? Usually you see bonuses like those tied to wonders, not buildings that every city can build.

Oh, and other building that give a bonus to an improved resource usually give that bonus to the resource whether it is improved or not.
 
I cant load the Mod. It says it is installed, and all. But I can not load it. HELP
 
I loaded up your NiGHTS mod last night and I must say that it's wicked fun. I do have a few gripes though. Maybe it was just the map that I got (because I like playng with abundant resources turned on), or maybe I wasn't quite expecting the population growth that I ended up getting, or whatever, but my capital ended up with an all grassland area, aside from three hills and a few ocean tiles, consisting of a sheep, three or four cows, and three or four cotton. Now, I know happiness is not an issue as far as population is concerned, because, of course, population gives happiness which is then used to field a military, but my god, my capital was growing ridiculously fast, though it took a rather long time to build anything in it. Now, the population isn't necessarilly where I have my gripe, but the lack of anything useful for them to do, in some cases) is. I made sure to turn on manual specialists, so as not to have any undesirable sorts popping up, but my population ended up growing much faster than my borders, so in many cases, I had many nonspecialized citizen.. specialists (you know, the ones who only give you +1 :c5production: and no GPP).

Glad you like it - I agree growth can get a little bit out of hand in v8.9, the rate of growth will not be as high in v9 - and specialists will also take longer to train as not every single building will be able to train them.

I do like the new specialists, the way they give you the feel of building your empire up over time instead of hitting one special technology and you've suddenly got a huge influx of this or that coming in empire wide. However, these new specialists have the ability to not only build their special improvements (such as the cotton farm or the wheat thinggy or whatever), but they also have the ability to build roads and even settle new cities. Were these intended actions for them?

This is intended, yes. One problem that comes up often is that your governor automatically slots specialists into buildings and if you've not paying attention you will train specialists that you don't need. This happened more in earlier versions of the mod where specialists were trained even faster than they are now, but allowing them to settle and build basic roads made these accidental specialists not completely useless. I may remove the ability for them to settle new cities - still undecided on that one.

Some of the buildings had.. odd combinations of things that they did, like, if I wanted X specialist for Y Resource I had to build Z building that gave a bonus to some other resource completely unrelated to the resource that I wanted to improve, or I simply couldn't even build that building because it had some obscure restriction for where it could be built. Also, a few maintencance costs seemed to be a bit off on a few of them. for example, one that give a flat +5 :c5production: that cost no maintenance, and a situational +1production to forests only that had a maintenance cost of 5 (not so worth it if you want to build only one or two lumbermills in a city that doesn't have much production otherwise.

I released new versions of the mod at a fairly rapid pace from 7-8.9 and many techs, buildings, and specialists ended up being moved around for balance. As a result there are some odd combinations in 8.9 that will be rectified for v9. There wont be free-maintenance production buildings for one - there will only be specialists devoted specifically to resources, (and not general terrain), and these specialists will be in job-appropriate buildings. Also, these specialist buildings will only be in the Ancient era tier of techs, but each specialist will be represented and have a unique building devoted to them.


Another thing is that the AI don't seem to know what to do with the new specialist types. I didn't see any of the special new improvements in any of the AIs lands. Because of my Cow heavy start and the super cow pastures from the associated specialist type, my science took off and I was far ahead of the AI, while usually on King Difficulty, I am not (or at least not until much later than when I got my initial tech lead).

I've had to scale back the AI's ability to train specialists that create improvements as they don't understand the logic behind the process. The result of this is that in earlier versions the AI would have loads of specialists roaming around trying to find appropriate terrain/resources when there were none available. I can't change their pathfinding/logic in this regard until the dll is released - and even then I'm doubtful this can be improved as the AI seems to have difficulty building regular improvements to some extent in the base game as well.

Also, since there is really no limiting factor on population growth, and each city only gives 2 unhappiness, you only take a hit of one unhappiness by settling a new city, so there's really no incentive to not REX aggressively, especially if you pick up Monarchy.

Also, I have a few questoins about building that do things like give Golden Age Length +10% or increase worker speed by X%. How exactly do those work? Usually you see bonuses like those tied to wonders, not buildings that every city can build.

Oh, and other building that give a bonus to an improved resource usually give that bonus to the resource whether it is improved or not.

I'm working on a maintenance type approach to building new cities to limit spamming them. In general, I don't like tying Unrest/Unhappiness to new cities. I think it's a flawed mechanic that is easily exploited in the base game and serves as little detriment to REXing aggressively. The more Governments you pick in 8.9 - the bigger the hit to your Stability, but it's true that if you focus on a Government like Monarchy, you pretty much have no detriment to over-expansion. Stability boosts like this are being removed from v9. Stability will also no longer be tied to citizen growth, both negatively or positively. There will be a new mechanic for Stability/Happiness/Unrest.

The bonuses to worker speed/golden age length act the same way that wonder bonuses do and they all stack on top of each other. There will be less of this in v9 as it can be easily exploited when playing larger maps with dozens of cities. As far as bonuses from buildings on improvements, these are working as intended - the tool-tips just need to be updated.

I cant load the Mod. It says it is installed, and all. But I can not load it. HELP

First make sure that your game is up-to-date on Steam. Then manually delete your cache folder located at: C:\<username>\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\cache

After this verify your cache through Steam - a defrag of your game files on Steam also wouldn't hurt. Finally, delete any old versions of NiGHTS and disable any other active mods that could be causing conflicts.

Hopefully this clears things up for you. :)
 
has anyone noticed that AI likes to build tones of artillery ? + if i get like 10 of them set up and a few guys to kinda guard them its just invincible. AI can not even ever come close to ever killing even one with 3 range and over hills it really seems over powered since AI cant seem to do this to. they just send them at your citys and it just seems like some thing that takes away from any sort of end game challenge all though when flight comes around it gets a lil more. but i really feel that there should be a lil more restrictions for artillery to make up for AI stupidity. like maybe make them a national unit say like 6 total per empire. or make them damage less at range 3 or some thing.

one game i played not sure if it was nights but china built so many of them that they would bombard my citys and i would just let them and make sure to kill any units that can take a city out. and use tanks/knights to quickly kill there artillery i must have killed 100s of them this way. only some times the AI would shoot one of the tanks i had killing them.

anyways i have not played nights since 8.4 cause im really just waiting for 9.0 and have to plan my timing right with real life stuff. i really hope to see some sort of ...well nerf on artillery . ill understand if no one feels this way about them though ;)
 
is there any other fix cause i cannot access my steam thanks

You pirated the game, I'm guessing?

I have a confession to make, prior a week from March 7th, my Civ 5 was pirated. The patch was at 1.3.5, while normal Civ 5 was this version. If you do have a pirated version, I strongly suggest you get the real version. I was surprised that loading times for the game SIGNIFICANTLY decreased.
 
Update on the Update

So things are moving along - but with Denmark DLC and a new Patch on the horizon I'm going to hold off on releasing v9 until I can test it out thoroughly as I'm pretty sure many of the mod components I've added so far are going to have conflicts with the upcoming Patch.

On a more positive note - the District Policy system is getting an overhaul of sorts. It now also features Guild system mechanic, with unique units, new improvements, and new policies. There will be pre-req policies in this new hybrid District system, (with the policy connector lines visible), to avoid certain policies being taken early on when they would be over-powered. Overall, the Government/Guild/District system will be far more in depth than the one currently in v8.9.
I'll post more on the new units and improvements over the next couple of days.
 
I've been flailing around on immortal, won a few science victories but I finally started to look carefully at the unrest drop-down and finally realized that sometimes it is better to raze an annexed city and rebuild except last map I had one city state that I couldn't raze and was growing like crazy. I was 3rd in points before I ran out of time trying for a points victory.

Is is a wicked and an enjoyable mod even when I don't win. I think that it is well balanced at this point as I had one game where zoom the UN got build and the AI had all its city states lined up and won a few turns later. They seem to use the city states effectively as well to go to war against you (tho they don't consider which ones are contiguous) and they do use some amphibious landings and have found them pillaging water tiles but not often land tiles. Other games they had science victories and many maps I just knew I would loose as the position was bad and I quit early.

Considering the difficulty I was playing on and the fact that I don't usually play civ at high difficulties I think it is balanced difficulty wise also.

I still am amazed that you managed to make a real game out of the original core release.:goodjob:

I trust that the new patch doesn't mess things up too much.:)
 
I think the addon got slighlty wonky with the new patch.

* Specialists icons on tooltips are slighlty off "TXT_KEY_SPECIALIST....." in all of them.
* Can't access the policy screen so that broke the addon.
 
So the latest patch has been released. It's basically broken everything. The Tech Pyramid, added buildings, specialists, the Governments screen, number diplomacy - everything is either completely or partially broken.

Slight Rant Upcoming:

For a game that was heralded for it's modding abilities, this is pretty sad. The majority of mods currently available will be affected by this update in some shape or form. Frankly, this entire process doesn't really make sense to me. When people stop playing the base game, those that continue playing move on to mods. This keeps the game fresh and even brings new players into the market. By continually releasing mod-breaking patches they're cutting off the hand that feeds them and only hurting themselves in the long run.

These frequent patches, along with the lack of dll support, are the main reasons why there are hardly any large-scale mods currently available or even in the production cycle. If the core game mechanics are still being changed over 7 months after initial release, (with no end in sight to the patch process as more have been confirmed), what incentive is there for modders to even take a second glance at Civ V when there's a perfectly stable version already available in Civ IV? I don't think I'm jumping to conclusions here when I speculate that this version of Civ, without it's Lead Designer, will probably not be completely patched, as far as core game mechanics go, for another 6 months at least. This is incredibly frustrating.

If there was some attempt to communicate with Modders as to what specific XML and LUA files were being altered and in what way, this wouldn't be nearly as painful. Instead, we're left with vague patch lists that may or may not include everything they are in fact patching. Fixing a mod like NiGHTS will require going through the XML/LUA and blocking out line by line until I find what's causing conflicts. There's literally around 50,000+ lines of code in NiGHTS. This is a nightmare.

I'll start my attempt to fix this mess - but this means v9 is going to be a long ways off - and that's if it's released at all.
 
So the latest patch has been released. It's basically broken everything. The Tech Pyramid, added buildings, specialists, the Governments screen, number diplomacy - everything is either completely or partially broken.

Slight Rant Upcoming:

For a game that was heralded for it's modding abilities, this is pretty sad. The majority of mods currently available will be affected by this update in some shape or form. Frankly, this entire process doesn't really make sense to me. When people stop playing the base game, those that continue playing move on to mods. This keeps the game fresh and even brings new players into the market. By continually releasing mod-breaking patches they're cutting off the hand that feeds them and only hurting themselves in the long run.

These frequent patches, along with the lack of dll support, are the main reasons why there are hardly any large-scale mods currently available or even in the production cycle. If the core game mechanics are still being changed over 7 months after initial release, (with no end in sight to the patch process as more have been confirmed), what incentive is there for modders to even take a second glance at Civ V when there's a perfectly stable version already available in Civ IV? I don't think I'm jumping to conclusions here when I speculate that this version of Civ, without it's Lead Designer, will probably not be completely patched, as far as core game mechanics go, for another 6 months at least. This is incredibly frustrating.

If there was some attempt to communicate with Modders as to what specific XML and LUA files were being altered and in what way, this wouldn't be nearly as painful. Instead, we're left with vague patch lists that may or may not include everything they are in fact patching. Fixing a mod like NiGHTS will require going through the XML/LUA and blocking out line by line until I find what's causing conflicts. There's literally around 50,000+ lines of code in NiGHTS. This is a nightmare.

I'll start my attempt to fix this mess - but this means v9 is going to be a long ways off - and that's if it's released at all.

Fixing a mod like NiGHTS will require going through the XML/LUA and blocking out line by line until I find what's causing conflicts. There's literally around 50,000+ lines of code in NiGHTS. This is a nightmare.

I think my brain needs a bandage. Just thinking of those codes and scripts is giving me a migraine.

Don't bother focusing on the features that you planned to put into version 9.0, but just the core of NiGHTS, I'm guess.

Please, do not give up on this amazing mod. PLEASE. I am too accustomed to using this mod, I can't even go through 1 era with vanilla Civ V!
 
Apologies for my earlier rant - I was kind of blind-sided by the amount of things broken in v8.9. I also don't want to seem ungrateful for the great tool that ModBuddy is, but some communication between Dev's and Modders could really go a long way in smoothing over the patching process. IE - it would have been nice to know that the 28th of April was the day the patch was going to be released. Then I wouldn't have left Steam on in the background so I would still have had some reference files to go by from the previous mod-stable patch. :crazyeye:

Alright, I've looked through all of the changes - and the mod is fixable. What's going to take time is the Government screen, as Firaxis has added some new ID's and lines of code to this which cause conflicts.

Basically, until we have DLL access, I can't delete anything from existing UI files. What I can do is reduce the size of graphical objects, move them around, and add new objects - which is what I've been doing up until this point. What this latest patch does is add some new ID's and lines of code to some of the existing UI XML's. My modded versions of these files lack these new lines of code and ID's and treats them as if they were deleted objects. This is why clicking on the Social Policy button doesn't open the screen anymore in v8.9 - the game thinks I've deleted objects when really they were never there to begin with.

This is also fixable, but tedious and time-consuming. That being said, I'm hopeful that I'll be able to fix this - and the other bugs that have now cropped up - within a week or two. I may hold off on releasing an updated version of the mod until the "next" part of this 2-stage patch is released.

NiGHTS isn't dead by any means, but it will be on hiatus for awhile until I get things resolved. Now would be a good time to get any requests/suggestions out there as v9 is going to represent a fairly vast evolution of the mod in a variety of areas.

This leads me to my next point. NiGHTS focuses heavily on the earlier era's rather than the later era's. It's always been my goal to expand the modern/future era, and this hasn't changed - but what are people's thoughts on expanding the earlier era's even more? This would involve new units and buildings - but the units themselves would all be closer together in terms of overall strength and abilities. Battles would be more about having a solid core with combinations of units as opposed to always just having the strongest possible unit up the Tech Pyramid. The amount of turns in the game wouldn't change, but they would be lengthened so that the game would end around 1600-1700, at which point the industrial/modern/future era's would then eventually be implemented/extended.

Thoughts?
 
I guess this patching is a both good and bad. On the bright side at least firaxis is still supporting the game, improving it and fixing bugs instead of just abandoning it after release. They are still better than CA for example! But not nearly as supportive as for example paradox entertainment.

And it sucks big time that a company that supposedly supports modders will screw them over this much by basically destroying the mods on purpose. So I can understand your frustration!

Like I said before, if you need help in any way let us now. Maybe it would be faster and easier if you let in some help to do some of the grunt work.
 
This leads me to my next question. NiGHTS focuses heavily on the earlier era's rather than the later era's. It's always been my goal to expand the modern/future era, and this hasn't changed - but what are people's thoughts on expanding the earlier era's even more? This would involve new units and buildings - but the units themselves would all be closer together in terms of overall strength and abilities. Battles would be more about having a solid core of combinations of units as opposed to always just having the strongest possible unit up the Tech Pyramid. The amount of turns in the game wouldn't change, but they would be lengthened so that the game would end around 1600-1700, at which point the industrial/modern/future era's would then eventually be extended.

Thoughts?

I always preferred the earlier eras to the modern age anyway, so anything that prolongs pre-20th century game is good IMO!
Maybe you can add something about industrialization? As of now it seems that you can easily reach huge populations with huge production early in the game. Maybe you can make raise the costs for buildings and slow down growth of cities so that the cities can continue meaningful growth also later?

You can sorta build everything in all cities now without having to worry about money.
 
I loaded the mod yesterday and had a great game, sadly today came a patch, and as usual, except for the map-mods its all broken again.

*removes automatical updates from the game again*

I aint modding myself, but i do wonder how they managed to build a modding api that breaks with EVERY patch.

You've got my sympathy.
 
I always preferred the earlier eras to the modern age anyway, so anything that prolongs pre-20th century game is good IMO!
Maybe you can add something about industrialization? As of now it seems that you can easily reach huge populations with huge production early in the game. Maybe you can make raise the costs for buildings and slow down growth of cities so that the cities can continue meaningful growth also later?

You can sorta build everything in all cities now without having to worry about money.

I think the majority of players prefer the earlier era's - there's a good chance v9 will go in this direction. I agree with you on how right now there's basically an overabundance of everything in the game. This will be scaled back somewhat in the fix/update. Buildings will scale much more naturally so that once you hit the later era's, the bonus garnered from buildings will make earlier bonuses feel comparatively small. Buildings will also tie in to the new Guilds/Governments system I briefly mentioned earlier. Growth will be stunted as well - v8.9 has the same growth formula that Vanilla CIV V has, and this will be modified to reign in the overabundance of food. Gold will also be in much shorter supply. Thanks for the quick feedback. I might just start taking people up on offers of grunt-work-help if work and school start getting too hectic. :)

I loaded the mod yesterday and had a great game, sadly today came a patch, and as usual, except for the map-mods its all broken again.

*removes automatical updates from the game again*

I aint modding myself, but i do wonder how they managed to build a modding api that breaks with EVERY patch.

You've got my sympathy.

Thanks thio - I'm working on a fix/update. :crazyeye: This patch hits especially hard as it affects the UI, while previous patches limited themselves to basic balance tweaks which made the mod at least playable in it's earlier iterations.
 
I mostly play early games. That is the the fun part so to speak. I mostly stop or start over when I reach more industrialized or modern parts of the game. So the longer that old part lasts the better really.
 
This leads me to my next question. NiGHTS focuses heavily on the earlier era's rather than the later era's. It's always been my goal to expand the modern/future era, and this hasn't changed - but what are people's thoughts on expanding the earlier era's even more? This would involve new units and buildings - but the units themselves would all be closer together in terms of overall strength and abilities. Battles would be more about having a solid core of combinations of units as opposed to always just having the strongest possible unit up the Tech Pyramid. The amount of turns in the game wouldn't change, but they would be lengthened so that the game would end around 1600-1700, at which point the industrial/modern/future era's would then eventually be extended.

Thoughts?

Ehh, I don't know about this. I do enjoy mostly playing Civ V in the ancient - renaissance era (especially the renaissance), but I don't know about having a game end in the 18th century, where the renaissance era would be, not the modern.

This is just me, but I am a very realistic, extremely picky person when it comes to Civ V. I once got kind of ticked when I saw Japan colonize in China's area in the YnAEMP.

How do you plan to extend the industrial/modern/future eras? When you do expand, I think the modern era should be the biggest of the three.
 
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