I just downloaded and tried the v1.2. I started with Fremen and build my second city on the "coast" next to 3 Spice resources. Later in the game, I noticed that the resources have disappeared. What happened?

Spice blows create spice; it disappears on its own, and it disappears faster if you have a harvester there. Wait a while, and more spice will appear. It is helpful to put a deep harvester on "automate". Then it will automatically build harvesters on any spice that appears inside your cultural borders. If spice didn't disappear, then there would be no more blows, or else the map would be completely filled.

I will add a "hint" about the disappearance.

Thanks. Now it makes sense.

Please consider either making the Spice Blows more frequent, making it last longer or reducing the upkeep for Spice Firms to make them reasonably profitable.

Thanks. Now it makes sense.

Please consider either making the Spice Blows more frequent, making it last longer or reducing the upkeep for Spice Firms to make them reasonably profitable.

We can certainly adjust the frequency and duration. Please note that corporations are gold-neutral; they cost 5 gold maintenance, and bring in 5 gold income. However, each spice bonus harvested brings in 5 commerce. So having 3-4 plots with spice harvesters costs 0 gold and brings 15-20 commerce.

We should maybe start an FAQ thread or user guide thread with information like this.

Added FAQ post to main thread which contains the existing hints. In software design, one rule is, the software should explain itself rather than relying on the user to go somewhere else to read the documentation. Hopefully the in-game hints should be enough.

I don't think the hints are the best solutions. Loading screen doesn't last long on my system, except in huge mods like FfH and Star Trek.

I think a nice explanation in civilopedia entry for Spice resource and also an entry in a new Dune War Concepts section would be perfect.

I agree that all the stubs in the civilopedia should be filled in.

If people look in the civilopedia, one helpful entry is "Hints", which lists all the hints. I hope that once people see useful hints popping up briefly during load, they may look to find all the hints in the civilopedia.

I don't think the Spice Firm mechanics is working. I started a new game wih Atreides and founded their Spice Firm. The only effect the Spice Firm has in my game is +5 gold, +1 beaker and 4.88 gold maintenance. Number of Spice resources doesn't affect the income from the Spice Firm, although the maintenance is gone when I have no Spice. So, actually, it's quite beneficial to have no Spice because you lose the maintenance but still get the gold and beakers.

I don't think the Spice Firm mechanics is working.

Please confirm that you are building spice harvesters on spice plots inside your cultural borders and they are connected by the "Desert Passage" or possibly "Desert Suits" (for deep desert) technologies. If you are seeing "Requires Route" on the improvements, then the problem is that you have not researched the right techs to connect them. If they are connected, then each one should pull in 5 commerce per turn. Check your economics advisor to see the commerce income (not gold income) from corporations.

(EDIT: correction: you need "Off World Trade", not "Desert Suits", for the deep desert connection.)

I have 3 Spice resources in my borders with required improvements and the tech to connect them. I've attached some screenshots.

I think it depends which house/civ you play. Some get that trade terrain connection with desert passage (eg. Duke Leto), other don't. It's a bug.

I think it depends which house/civ you play. Some get that trade terrain connection with desert passage (eg. Duke Leto), other don't. It's a bug.

I am playing Duke Leto and the connection works. The Spice resource is getting to my cities. The only problem is that there is absolutely no effect on the corporation.

That is curious. I did the following steps as Duke Leto and I see the corporation income.

1. Start a game, any difficulty, any size, and found my first city on a "coast"
2. In World Builder, give myself Desert Passage, Off World Trade and Spice Extraction technologies, and a Deep Harvester unit
3. In World Builder, switch to the Smugglers player and put a spice blow right next to my city.
4. Back in the game, wait three turns till the spice blow explodes (alternatively you could place a spice bonus on a square inside your cultural borders)
5. Use the Deep Harvester to put a Spice Harvester improvement on the spice plot.
6. Look in the economic advisor (screenshot). 10 commerce from corporations.

I have checked in assets/xml/gameinfo/civ4corporationinfo.xml to make sure that all the unique corps have the 5 commerce income. You can search for <YieldsProduced> and see 0, 0, 500 for all of them. So I do not think it affects some civs but not others.

Is there anything I am doing, which seems different from what you are doing? I cannot see anything different in your screenshots. Do you have python logging turned on, and do you see any error messages appearing in My Games/Beyond The Sword/Logs/PythonErr.log? You are using 3.19, right?

This is extremely annoying. I've tried to follow all the steps you listed and I still have the same problem. Actually, now that I did some testing with WorldBuilder, I see that I'm getting 1 gold per Spice resource, which is also obvious from the screenshots I posted. I tried to reinstall the mod and still nothing. Dune Wars is version 1.2 on BtS 3.19. I've turned the logging on and got a 0-byte PythonErr.log.

I agree this is annoying. Can you check your assets/xml/gameinfo/civ4corporationinfo.xml file for your civ, and verify that you see:


<YieldsProduced>
<iYieldProduced>0</iYieldProduced>
<iYieldProduced>0</iYieldProduced>
<iYieldProduced>500</iYieldProduced>
</YieldsProduced>


Searching for other random things which may be different ... what is your handicap level? Does it occur for one other civ besides Leto?

Yeah, the xml file is exactly the same. I'm just retrying with Paul Muad'Dib and still 1 gold per Spice. The only anomaly I noticed is Python Exception: "Can't find type enum for type tag UNITCLASS_CARAVEL". I'm playing at Noble level. Haven't touched any of the options at game start or in BUG.

The UNITCLASS_CARAVEL message seems strange. Is there any traceback? I searched in all my assets/xml/*/*.xml files and there is no UNITCLASS_CARAVEL. Is it possible you have some files in your My Games/Beyond The Sword/customassets directory? Is there any more detailed traceback of the message containing a file and line number?

I have managed to locate a reference to UNITCLASS_CARAVEL in Python/EntryPoints/CvRandomEventInterface.py

Although I have installed some files into my CustomAssets for the Star Trek mod, there is no mention of UNITCLASS_CARAVEL in that directory.

Do you have "random events" turned on in the custom game menu? I cannot see how that would make any difference, but if the unitclass message is appearing, and the only place it appears is in the random events, perhaps they are related. This seems low probability.

Yeah, the random events are turned on by default. Should they be disabled for Dune Wars?

Just tried a new game without random events. No Python exceptions this time, but still getting 1 gold per Spice from the corporation.

So far we have one person (me) who consistently gets the commerce income from corps, one person (nameless one) who consistently doesn't, and one person who gets the commerce income sometimes (koma13). We have to track down why this is happening. Nameless, are you sure it is not due to the customassets files you have locally? Something is preventing the corporation from doing what it is supposed to do.

Well, there's only one way to find out: empty the CustomAssets and have some more fun with Dune Wars until I hit the corporation thingie. I'm posting the results in about an hour. Wish me luck.

Well, there's only one way to find out: empty the CustomAssets and have some more fun with Dune Wars until I hit the corporation thingie. I'm posting the results in about an hour. Wish me luck.


It takes two minutes with World Builder ...

Playing is more fun :)

Still no improvement. Tried with good old Stilgar this time, with CustomAssets totally empty. Still 1 gold per Spice.

Can you put up your save game? I cannot think of anything specific to try, but maybe something will occur to me.

Here's all four of them in a zip. Hopefully you can discover something.

I found two differences between your games and mine, which I had not thought to ask about. But neither one solves the problem. You are using the Planet_Generator mapscript, while I always use Archipelago. You are playing at "extended" gamespeed, while I always play at normal speed. But when I start games with your settings for both of those, I still get commerce from spice. When I load your games, I do not get commerce from spice.

This is a puzzle. Here are a couple of my save games built using world builder. Can you see that there is spice commerce in the economic advisor? As you add and remove spice harvesters you can see this number change.

I am out of ideas. Anybody else?

I didn't use Planet_Generator on all saves. Some of them are with Archipelago. I found Archipelago better for something that looks even remotely like Arrakis, except that it generates a lot of Salt features when set on Arid climate. All saves are on extended gamespeed.

I get a ctd when trying to load either of your saves. The ctd occurs just after the BUG popup, about the time when the game is about to switch from loading screen to the map.

The options I tried to start with in the last couple of tests are:
Map: Archipelago
Size: Huge or TXT_KEY_WORLD_FXMAMMOTH
Climate: Arid
Desert Level: Medium - High
Era: Birth of Arrakis
Speed: Extended
Landmass Type: Archipelago
World Wrap: Cylindrical
Resources: Standard

Options: Revolution Mod, BarbarianCiv Mod, TechDiffusion Mod, DynamicCivNames Mod

Victories: all


Sadly, it seems the 3.19 of civ4 is still not supported by wine so I can't try it on a clean install.

Ok, those linux gamers are just plain stupid. They reported the fact that civ4 3.19 would not load mods which were not updated to 3.19 as a Wine problem :/