This idea has been floating around in my head for a while but I can't get it worked out. In the original novel, Liet-Kynes has a plan to terraform Arrakis by planting grass to anchor the dunes, then gradually introducing small animals. As the grass area extends, it would drive away the worms. Carried through all the way, it would kill all the worms and turn the planet into a normal green planet again.

I want to capture this as an "alignment". You are either for the worms, or for the water, you must pick a side. The navigators guild would obviously be against it. The fremen would probably be for it.

I have looked through the global warming code in CvGame.cpp and it is very simple. I could easily do something similar in python. Basically it says, each tile of forest counts as a positive "global warming defense"; each city unhealth and nuclear explosion counts as a negative. If the result is negative enough, then random tiles are turned to desert and their improvements removed.

For Arrakis we want something the opposite. Fundamentally as civs plant crops, the amount of worms and spice gets less. There would be a "tipping point" -- three percent, three hundred fifty years.

There are several parts I can't work out. Should we make an additional improvement type which is specifically for this type of grass planting? Would we use a normal pillaging mechanism for the people who are "against" terraforming? Is there another defense which strengthens the worms and the spice? How do civs "declare" themselves for one side or the other? In FFH this is modeled as religion, sort of, with an alignment on top of it. I don't know the details. But we are already using religions as religions. And, how does this lead to a victory of some sort? I thought of reskinning the space race victory or using some kind of project, but I can't get the details.

Does this seem like an interesting idea? How can we build mechanics around it?

good idea,

heres an idea,

in thomas war, as well as a stand alone addition in his python wonders that he released, theres a wonder - eden -

once built - a set num of tiles around the city - is terra formed - making desert to grass, snow to tundra and so on.

what if,
we do the same wonder mechanics,
only that instead of regular terra form - it creates agrass/green terrain - that isnt placed on the map normally - and its idea -once built in a city a set num of tiles near the city - no matter the kind - desert tundra desert plains - turns to green/grass terrain,

so in order to win this victory - you need to build say 7 of these wonders, and then you win terra' victory - 7 of you cities have converted all of its surrounding terrain into grass.

and perhaps - we can make that - after getting 7 of these wonders - your allowed to build "arrakis terra forming -wonder - that converted all of arrakis's terrain into green terrain - and that will bring victory.
kinda like spaceship victory - build 7 parts - then go and buld mega part, wait a few turns, bang wonder is in effect (like the spaceship gets to alpha centauri -victory delay xml line).

now how does that sounds ?

I definitely like the idea, I mentioned a few ideas for this in the faction differentiation thread. I'd definitely want this to be something that one of the Fremen factions had inherent bonuses towards achieving.

In terms of alignment; you could do something similar to Planetfall, with Pro-planet and Pro-Terraformers as civic options, and have diplomacy benefits and penalties between people who have adopted one civic vs those who have adopted the other.

"You risk destroying the spice! This cannot be allowed", -4 diplomacy.
"This planet could become paradise, you must not be allowed to stop it." -4 diplomacy.

(A la "you have adopted a foreign religion" diplomacy messages, etc.)

The Wonder method sounds possible. Maybe Fremen could somehow get double speed in constructing such wonders?
I'd call these wonders Reservoir of Kynes or something.
Another thought; if you go with the water for food idea, then these wonders should be buildable with Food as well as (or instead of) hammers. Basically, you're storing water up to have enough to enact Kynes' plan, like the vast reservoirs the Fremen have in the book/movie.

However, the terraforming really makes much more sense if food is actually food, rather than water. (Still works fine with water for health). If I somehow make a verdant grassland, that tile will be good for growing more food, but won't really provide more water.

Another thought: if you're dropping Tubers, then you have the forest/floodplain feature tile leftover for use (a tile can have a terrain type, a feature and an improvement). So rather than changing the terrain type, it could spawn a feature that adds +1 food to the tile.

Civics part

Good suggestion about using a civic for this. Can anybody give more detail about how this works in Planetfall? My thought was to hijack one of the five civic columns and make it: Ardent Pro-Terraformer, Pro-Terraformer, Neutral, Pro-Spice, Ardent Pro-Spice. The navguild would have a preferred civic of Ardent Pro-Spice. The Pro-Terraformer civics would be enabled by some tech which also enables terraforming itself, and that would be the preferred civic for Fremen.

Which column seems the least required for Dune? Are there some civics which should be "saved" from that column? Are there some civics in other columns which could be dropped so that these can be saved?

Apart from the vanilla concept of preferred civic, I am not sure how to factor this into diplomacy. That mechanic may be enough to get started.

Terraforming part

The goal is to get a lot of the bare, unused land covered by simple grass. One way to do this is to make windtrap buildable outside cultural borders, and add a new improvement "anchor grass" or similar which requires fresh water. It would not give any food/water/health/whatever benefit at all; the point is just to cover territory with it. Maybe initially it is not buildable on desert or barren terrain, but with a higher tech, then you can build it there also. (Never desert waste or deep desert.)

The game could check against a threshold to decide when "enough" terrain is covered. This would count certain improvements such as drip farming as well as the anchor grass improvement. Based on one quote in the book, let's call this the Three Percent Threshold. The pro-terraformers would get some benefit, and the pro-spicers would lose some benefit. (Not sure what exactly but it would have to be strong.) So the pro-spicers would have motivation to seek out distant windtraps and destroy them. As a result, the threshold may be true, or false, or true again at different points in the game.

When the threshold is true, we can have a global warming type effect which causes a new, good terrain type like grass to appear. I suppose this would benefit everybody, it seems unfair to keep pro-spicers from using it. But maybe it would appear "near" the anchor grass areas.

Victory part

We may be able to just recycle the spaceship victory. It requires seven different parts. There is a tower victory in FFH, I am not sure if that uses the same mechanic, but those are seven different towers you need. There is no reason to have *different* projects for this in Dune Wars. I am not sure how customizable this is; it does not seem to fit exactly what we want. The idea would be that when you are above the Three Percent Threshold, *only*, you can work on these projects. Once all of them get built then you win. I am not sure if we can actually prevent projects from being worked when some random condition is true or false. Some further investigation on this part is definitely needed.

you dont need to remove a civic,
we can just add another easily.


using the windtrap as an anchor of fresh water...interesting,

but for the game to work i dont know if that will be good - cause - what will make the ai to built the terraform improvemnt?

in my opinion the "eden" wonder is more easy to do, cause the code exists, the ai will build it, and it will be easier to use it for a victory.

but...thats just me :)

anyway - this is a must have thing in our mod.

Civics.

As stated, you can just create a new civics column. You're already presenting them in a list in this mod, so you don't even have to worry about horizontal space.

In Planetfall, you can adopt either Hybrid economy, Terraforming economy or Enclosed Biospheres.

Hybrid (ie accept Planet and work with it) and Terraforming (turn the world into a new earth and kill/control Planet) are fundamental antagonists; factions with one civic get a big penalty towards factions with the other civic. I don't know what the hooks are for doing this.
Just like how in FFH, you get a penalty with Good civs from using slavery, and you used to get one for using low health civics before they were cut.

Terraforming gives a +100% worker build speed bonus (which is valuable because there exist some very high tile yield but long production time improvements, like thermal boreholes) and a +100% growth rate of farms (farms scale up from +1 to +2 to +3 output over many turns like cottages).
Hybrid gives tile yield bonuses to hybrid forest improvements, and some other effects (including reduced city maintenance from distance or number of cities, I forget which).

So, basically, the two factions have very different incentives for what improvements to build; one has incentives for high yield but high "pollution" (ie anti-Planet) industrially type improvements (which can cause fungal blooms of barbarian units), while the other have more incentives for cheaper, lower yield improvements and sprawling empires.

Terraforming part
I still think that there needs to be some direct benefit for teraformer factions, maybe with high-build time terrain improvements that have higher yields.

Sending lots of workers out into uncontrolled territory is expensive (you have to escort them) and time consuming, so it needs to have some direct tangible benefits.
Also, the AI is unlikely to do it; I think any improvement construction is going to have to occur inside your controlled territory.

Both the Altar and the Towers of Mastery victories in FFH use tweaked versions of spaceship win; you need this (or these) Wonders or projects built to win. This is likely the most promising path. I still like the idea if you use water for food of making food contribute to these wonders; make it feel more like the Fremen plan of saving up enough water to then use on the Project.

Another idea:
If you adopt teraformer civic, you gain access to building a new improvement type; anchor grass (does this hook exist?).
Anchor grass gives a +1 food/water tile yield with teraformer civic (to make the AI build it, and to stop you from changing civics and still keeping benefits) and is only buildable inside your own territory on desert tiles (either ocean or landbased).
Spice blows can no longer spawn on anchor grass tiles, and adjacent spice blows will no longer spawn spice on an anchor grass tile.

A worked anchor grass tile could also eventually evolve into a grassland tile, which gives +2 tile bonus. Either have it naturally occur with some probability (like forests into ancient forests in FFH), or just grow like a cottage after ~60 turns.
Have the terraformer civic halve the growth time (=+100% growth rate) or natural probability.

Then have the Eden wonders require the terraformer civic and high tech requirements.

So you don't actually have to force the grass to grow to build the wonders (I'm guessing the hooks would be hard), but if you adopt terraformer civic you have carrots to encourage you to plant the grasses (and lose spice access).

As stated, you can just create a new civics column. You're already presenting them in a list in this mod, so you don't even have to worry about horizontal space.

Yes, but I don't feel like the existing 25 civics are very interesting. I bet we could cut it down to 20 more interesting/useful ones, and then add the terraforming related ones.

Sending lots of workers out into uncontrolled territory is expensive (you have to escort them) and time consuming, so it needs to have some direct tangible benefits.
Also, the AI is unlikely to do it; I think any improvement construction is going to have to occur inside your controlled territory.

OK, we already have an outpost in the mod, so I can make anchor grass buildable inside borders. If you want to grow more, build an outpost. I like the idea of it automatically upgrading to a swordgrass plot after some turns. Maybe there is another level of upgrade to a real grass plot once you hit the Three Percent Threshold. Or since there may be no hooks to make the T.P.T, we could skip that part and focus on tech requirements for the projects.

Not really up to speed with this thread, but certainly think terraforming victory is a good idea.

It would be great if it was really visible sort of like the hell terrain in FFH2. You can tell the advanced terraformers by the fact their lands are green with grass.

One thing has always confused me though. The Fremen worship the worm as Shai Hulud and rely on various produces of the worm (spice, water of life), but then they ultimately destroy them by following Kynes' teachings about turning Arrakis into a paradise. Seems like a strange contradiction. I'm sure someone has insight...

i really like your ideas Ahriman,

i hope we will begin work on this soon.

Deliverator,
hummm....interesting indeed!
i now reading the first dune book, i bought the whole 6 book set by frank h, all because of this mod :).

im now half way to the book, i guess perhaps an aswer for this quastion lies around 1000+ pages in my future :)

It would be great if it was really visible sort of like the hell terrain in FFH2. You can tell the advanced terraformers by the fact their lands are green with grass.

Good point. I need a graphic for "anchor grass". My graphics skills include recoloring, but that's about it. I can take the sword grass and make it greener. Could you make several variants, one of which is taller? I like the idea of zooming out a late game map where the terraformers are winning, and seeing it look green. In related news, many of the existing graphics are kind of hard to see on the map, like grey on brown.

The art to-do list is growing exponentially! Variants on the grass should be pretty easy though.

Yeah, a lot of the bonuses and improvements need new or replacement art, even just a recolour. The Barrel Cactus is amusing...

Deliverator...your laughing on my cactus?...:)

hehe...

ill point out, that, i made the improvemnts and the bonuses to fit each other - without using the too complicated civplot.xml file (buildings folder).

A thought for preferences; Fremen, Atreides and arguably Tleilexu might prefer terraforming; the Tleixlu don't care so much if the only source of spice in the galaxy is lost, because they're working on their own synthetic substitute; no more natural spice -> more power for them.

Everyone else would probably fight terraforming pretty hard, particularly the Guild over all others, who should probably be hard-code blocked from adopting terraforming.

I have a more or less final design.

New civic column "Terraforming", three entries, "Pro-Spice", "Neutral", "Pro-Water". Navigator has preferred civic pro-spice, both fremen factions have preferred pro-water. I am not sure how to make one civic give a bad reaction to the other like religions do, but I will figure that out and add it.

When you have pro-water civic, you can build two new improvements and one new unit.

Reservoir of Liet improvement: uses outpost mechanics plus windtrap mechanics. Provides slightly higher water bonus than windtrap, plus it can be built outside cultural borders and spreads control, but gives much less defensive bonus. Small percentage chance to upgrade adjacent desert tiles to plains, plains to arid. If you switch civics, it downgrades to a normal windtrap. I need some way to draw the AI attention to pillaging this, perhaps a high gold value will be enough. As temporary art, I will use a larger, recolorized version of Lord Tirian's new windtrap.

Anchor grass improvement: can be built inside cultural borders, requires fresh water, provides +1 food on tile. After 30 turns has a small chance per turn of converting into a swordgrass bonus assuming you still have the civic. As temporary art, I will probably use the cyan colored swordgrass, and make a new swordgrass which is more green. If I knew how, I would also make swordgrass taller.

Terraform worker unit: a worker unit which can *only* build reservoir and anchor grass. So when it is on automation that is what it will build. Normal workers cannot build those improvements. I will force the AI civs to spend some percentage of their production on these workers when it has the appropriate civic. I will reskin the worker and add at least a green armband.

In 1.2.3 I added a check so that spice will not appear near fresh water. So there is some small penalty to having lots of windtraps. But I need a suggestion for a strong bonus which the *other* civic will give. I thought maybe the pro-planet civic might get less commerce income from spice, but that doesn't make sense.

I'm guessing Pro-Spice needs both positive and negative effects, otherwise it would be a no-brainer...

I can create a taller grass NIF for you.

I'm guessing Pro-Spice needs both positive and negative effects, otherwise it would be a no-brainer...

I guess the idea of civics is that they are almost all positive, you are forced to trade off which positive you want. So the trick is to come up with two positives that are equally valuable. Looking through the civics xml, there are lots of things we *could* easily do in civics, like decrease the city distance penalty, but none of them jump out at me as immediately related to pro-spice.

Maybe +1 commerce from spice harvesters, or +1 hammer.

Maybe +1 commerce from spice harvesters, or +1 hammer.

I like +1 hammer. Sold.

Make anchor grass and sword grass spread fresh water (unlike drip farms).

This way, tiles adjacent to tiles adjacent to sword grass won't be candidates for spice blows either.

Since relatively few of your spice tiles are worked, there needs to be a big reduction in spice economy I think for this to be balanced; otherwise under a pro-water civic you could still get the terrain improvements *and* get big spice income.
This will probably need to be tweaked after playtesting.

I suggest you consider hard-coding a few more faction preferences over the civics, otherwise every civ is like to evaluate one (probably pro-spice, since pro-water has no direct effect) as being superior and adopt it.
Atreides are soft and nice to the poor oppressed native peoples, so they'd probably support it, as would the Tlielexu (damn I can't spell that word) since they're working on a synthetic alternative.

Make anchor grass and sword grass spread fresh water (unlike drip farms). This way, tiles adjacent to tiles adjacent to sword grass won't be candidates for spice blows either.

Having the "spice-free" zone grow is a good idea. I don't think that the flag to spread irrigation works quite the way you think. That is, if you place a chain of farms in vanilla with Civil Service, I don't think the tiles show up as having fresh water. I think a farm gives the irrigated yield bonus if *either* it is on fresh water, *or* it is connected to a farm which has irrigation.

After playtesting (well, after *implementation* and then playtesting) we can decide if the spice-free zone needs to get bigger.

I suggest you consider hard-coding a few more faction preferences over the civics, otherwise every civ is like to evaluate one (probably pro-spice, since pro-water has no direct effect) as being superior and adopt it.

I agree, but I am having a little trouble finding the hooks for this. I can see positive civic reactions but not negative ones. See this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=327009) for more discussion.

That is, if you place a chain of farms in vanilla with Civil Service, I don't think the tiles show up as having fresh water.

I think you're right. Well, just make the spice blow check whether any adjacent tiles have water when it blows; that is, the spice blow normally makes spice on its target tile and some secondary adjacent tiles. Now, on each of those secondary adjacent tiles, have it first check whether a tile adjacent to the secondary tile has fresh water access, and if not, then revert prevent

So, if I build a windtrap or reservoir of liet, and build a sandgrass on an adjacent tile, then any tiles adjacent to *that* can't get spice on them.

Another point with anchor grass and sandgrass; remember that part of the point of this is converting the *desert* (ie the coastal/ocean tiles). It may not be worth building anchor grass on land tiles that you could more profitably cottage. Definitely you're not going to want to rip out your existing cottages and turbines.
So the terraformer needs to be amphibious, and to be able to build land and ocean improvements, and the AI needs to understand this.
I expect that you need two different improvements for this, a land-based and an ocean-based.

I agree, but I am having a little trouble finding the hooks for this. I can see positive civic reactions but not negative ones.

I mean: can't you make multiple preferred civics for a faction? So Pro-water will be the preferred civic for 4 factions (2xFremen + Atr + Tl), and pro-spice the preferred civic for another 4 factions (BG + Imp + Gui + Hark)?
In addition to whatever other preferred civics they have?

So the terraformer needs to be amphibious, and to be able to build land and ocean improvements, and the AI needs to understand this. I expect that you need two different improvements for this, a land-based and an ocean-based.

I am a little nervous about changing coast/ocean to land during the game. My thought was that since the Reservoir is buildable outside cultural borders, you would pick a relatively useless island or peninsula, and build the reservoir there.

I mean: can't you make multiple preferred civics for a faction? So Pro-water will be the preferred civic for 4 factions (2xFremen + Atr + Tl), and pro-spice the preferred civic for another 4 factions (BG + Imp + Gui + Hark)?
In addition to whatever other preferred civics they have?

As far as I can tell in the schema, each LH can have one preferred civic. More than one LH can have the same preferred civic. But I cannot find any way to make an *enemy* this way. We can say, civ X has a preferred civic Y, civ Z is using civic Y, so civ X gets friendlier with Z. We cannot say, civ X has a hated civic Y, so civ X makes an enemy of Z.

I am a little nervous about changing coast/ocean to land during the game.

Agreed, but you don't actualyl have to do this. You just have a naval improvement (build desert anchor grass) that upgrades to another naval imrovement (desert sandgrass), and then a land improvement (build
My only worry

All the sandgrass and anchor grass imrpovements do is increase tile yields; thats the point; it feels like you're terraforming what once was desert and making it usable. It can still be ocean as far as unit access and the like is concerned.

Another thing; you'd want to make it so sandworms can't enter an anchor grass or sandgrass tile (they're repelled by the water content).


My thought was that since the Reservoir is buildable outside cultural borders, you would pick a relatively useless island or peninsula, and build the reservoir there.

But if the whole point of doing this is to increase tile yields (and get more water), why would you bother? What is the gain from building grass out in the middle of nowhere? Even if you coded in like some threshold of total world that had to be covered in grass to build the victory wonders, thats very inconsistent and its unclear that the AI would ever do this. I don't think the AI ever builds improvements outside of a city fat cross.

And we want getting these gains of extra water to cost you commerce through less spice access.


But I cannot find any way to make an *enemy* this way.


These are two different issues.
a) Issue one: how to make sure that some factions adopt each civic, so we don't have the whole world being pro-spice. This is a problem that the Planetfall mod tends to have; all the AIs have a tendency to adopt Hybrid Economy (as opposed to terraformed economy) because hybrid gave big reductions in city maintenance costs.
If the benefits of the civics aren't ones that the AI can easily understand, then you need to somehow hard-code which civic will be adopted by each AI. Preferred civic is one way to do this, but there are probably others.
b) Issue two: once we have some factions that are pro-spice and some that are pro-water, how do we make them hate each other?
I know that the Planetfall mod does this (try asking Maniac, who runs this mod) and FFH once did this too. But I don't know how. I'll ask Maniac.

But if the whole point of doing this is to increase tile yields (and get more water), why would you bother? What is the gain from building grass out in the middle of nowhere? Even if you coded in like some threshold of total world that had to be covered in grass to build the victory wonders, thats very inconsistent and its unclear that the AI would ever do this. I don't think the AI ever builds improvements outside of a city fat cross.

The idea is to have a unit, which the AI is forced to build, which can do nothing else except build this stuff. I think that would work. But I agree, the *point* of doing this is missing from the current design. I had originally suggested a Three Percent Threshold, but then my current design doesn't need it, and now there is pretty much no point except making the map look different. That is why we have discussion threads before implementation :-)

a) Issue one: how to make sure that some factions adopt each civic, so we don't have the whole world being pro-spice. This is a problem that the Planetfall mod tends to have; all the AIs have a tendency to adopt Hybrid Economy (as opposed to terraformed economy) because hybrid gave big reductions in city maintenance costs.
If the benefits of the civics aren't ones that the AI can easily understand, then you need to somehow hard-code which civic will be adopted by each AI. Preferred civic is one way to do this, but there are probably others.

I agree this is a problem. I do not know for sure whether the LH favorite civic actually causes the AI to adopt it; I thought it was just to give a positive reaction bonus.

b) Issue two: once we have some factions that are pro-spice and some that are pro-water, how do we make them hate each other? I know that the Planetfall mod does this (try asking Maniac, who runs this mod) and FFH once did this too. But I don't know how. I'll ask Maniac.

I have just started this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=327064) in the planetfall forum. But there is a related thread there on LH XML values, which "implies" that they do not actually have this feature.

Yay for discussion threads!

I would submit that tile yield changes are likely to be the most effective method of encouraging both human and AI players to undertake terraforming. Building anchor grass on the dunes to increase food income, but at the cost of reducing spice blows and so reducing commerce income.

Forcing the AI to build units that do nothing except change terrain seems foolish; and obviously a strategic human player would never build them.

Some updates for today.

We have found sdk source code for HatedCivics, at this link (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8246243&postcount=4).

I locally created the Reservoir of Liet, Anchor Grass, and Terraform Worker as described earlier. The worker AI will happily run around and build the Reservoir inside cultural borders.

I have seen Anchor Grass get built, but since it gives no bonus at all, I'm not sure why the AI bothers. I have also seen the worker go back to sit in a city even though Anchor Grass could be built nearby. Perhaps some of the plots near a city get "reserved" for more useful improvements. I suppose that I could get "something" by making anchor grass give +1 food, er I mean water; then I assume the area inside cultural borders would fill up with this. If I make it auto-promote to sword grass, then we will get the effect of a pro-water civ cultural area turning greener.

I agree that it will be a problem to have the AI build the Reservoir outside cultural borders since I don't know how to get an escorting unit. But I really like the concept of having the Reservoirs built in "remote, secret locations away from the eyes of outsiders". Maybe with the groundwater marked as iAIObjective in 1.2.8, I can get the AI to build reservoirs on distant groundwater locations.

In summary this is still in the poking-around stage. Any suggestions for additional mechanics welcome.

I still hate the idea of there being no real benefit to the human player from building the grasses.

A visual effect really isn't enough; there needs to be a strategic reason why the human player will pursue terraforming. Why should a human player bother expending time/effort/energy in building reservoirs out in the middle of nowhere, where there are no cities? Why should they build terraformer units if these have no real benefit?

My recommendation is for water tile yield bonus, and to allow the grass to be built on desert/ocean tiles, so that you aren't forced to terraform over the top of your existing cottages/turbines once you get the tech requirements for building the grass.
If you don't like that, then find something else. But it would be unfortunate I think for this to be a cosmetic feature only.

The choice between terraforming and pro-spice can be a choice between more water = bigger cities, more specialistic,etc and more hammers from the spice and other spicey benefits that we haven't thought of yet.

Would it be possible to divert some of your water income into a terraforming fund. When have saved up enough water you can start changing the face of Arrakis. This reflects the strategy of the Fremen in the book most accurately. Don't know if it would work in practice.

Also, I'd like the effect of terraforming to be more dramatic and actually change the terrain. In FFH2, they basically have hell versions of various normal terrains. We can have verdant terraformed versions of the barren desert terrains. I guess there'd be two ways to achieve this (a) have FFH2 style spells just like Spring and Vitalize which improve the terrain (without disrupting the improvements on it, but problems for the AI) or (b) when you are running the terraforming civic your terrain gradually gets greener in a similar way to the Ancient Forests appearing when running Fellowship of Leaves in FFH2. You may have to make it hard to run terraforming - like you get a Civ wide water penalty because all your water is going towards it.

You could even have forests start sprouting up too, given enough time.

We should make sure worms can't enter the water rich terraformed terrain which would be another benefit of the strategy.

Also, I still like the Sirocco wind idea I described in the Water for Food thread.

+ Maybe link water into the terraforming ideas - I had an idea that when you pass the Three Percent Threshold you start getting Sirocco winds that move around like sandstorms. When these pass over your windtraps you get extra water. Also could you divert some of your water income into a terraforming fund somehow - then collecting water takes you closer to a Terraforming victory.

This idea is right out of Kynes' death scene in the book, where he keeps hearing his father, Pardot Kynes, describing how Arrakis can be terraformed.

I still hate the idea of there being no real benefit to the human player from building the grasses.

Look, I agree with you. Can you suggest something which will work, and which the AI will understand? That is where I am stuck. It seems the AI will not bother to build improvements which offers a small benefit such as +1 water, outside the fat cross let alone by constructing some outlying outpost type structure. This is disappointing but maybe we can find some other creative solution. When I have a chance I will try out making the Reservoir of Liet buildable on groundwater, which already has iAIObjective; that may encourage building this outside cultural borders.

Also, I'd like the effect of terraforming to be more dramatic and actually change the terrain.

We agree on the goal. Now to get some mechanics ...

Would it be possible to divert some of your water income into a terraforming fund. When have saved up enough water you can start changing the face of Arrakis. This reflects the strategy of the Fremen in the book most accurately.

Interesting idea. There is a field in buildinginfo which allows changing the yields. For example, palace gives +8 commerce. That means it should be possible to have a building which gives -1 water. With a high iAIWeight, the AI may build it. Perhaps this building could be the one which randomly generates upgrades to your terrain. But still we need some way for the player and AI to put in work, which causes green to spread.

Could the negative water building (we could make the Reservoir of Liet be this) be a prerequisite for changing terrain to the more verdant version. To what extent does the AI use the terraforming spells (Spring, Vitalize) in FFH2? I know back when I was playing it a lot they never seemed to. Perhaps Kael has found a way to fix this.

Have you looked at the Terraforming modcomp that seems to be part of the Dune Wars SDK? Looks like it supports forest planting which could be cool for later stages of terraforming.
Link:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=320354

Deliverator,
your right, as i said before,

this mod is inside, the former can level hills and vise verse.

It sounds like they have a trick to get the AI using it too.

WELL, ITS AN SDK CODE , SO THEY PROBABLY MADE SURE THE AI WILL USE THIS.

DAMN...SORRY FOR The caps lock


anyway -

do you want me guys to get the eden project that i have and to form some sort of a transforming victory for version 1.3 that youll be able to go on from? i have something in mind for a few days now.

I'd say leave it out for 1.3. There is an ongoing discussion about this and I'd like something a bit more Dune flavoured than just an Eden Project...

sure buddy.

In the terraforming thread there is some debate about whether the AI uses it; for what seems to be the latest, see this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8193643&postcount=53). There is no SDK component to this, as far as I can tell it is just python, and the AI is encouraged to use the improvements by some fake positive yields. So there is no big solution here. I think the AI does not use it, or if so, it may use it occasionally in fat crosses if there is no other improvement which gives higher benefit.

One other thought, however. How about the Armageddon Counter mechanism from FFH. We had been focusing on locally improving the amount of green improvements. If I understand AC correctly, it is more global, but those who are against hell terrain can send priests around to de-hell it, or whatever the right FFH term is.

It is amusing to me, because one very helpful/vocal player for Fury Road kept recommending to add a type of Armageddon Counter to Fury Road at every opportunity. I never looked up the mechanics, but maybe that is the right approach.

Could be interesting. The more negative water (terraforming reservoirs) you build the more the counter goes up each turn. As the counter goes up the terrain of the planet changes - becomes more green. In a way, that is modelling the Three Percent Threshold idea quite well.

Edit: You may be interested to read this thread I opened on Jacarutu, to try and discover why the Fremen proceed with terraforming when it ends up killing the worms:
http://www.jacurutu.com/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=1536

OK, here is a new proposal. Please feel free to hate this one too, constructively of course :-)

Keep the same civics mechanism. We'll need to integrate the HatedCivics code from darkciv to make the negative diplo values work, but this can be added at any time. The pro-spice faction will have access to a tech which provides +1 hammer per spice harvester improvement.

The main mechanic is the Terraform Counter. It is a global value; as it increases, then more green terrain appears. The primary increase for TC is the Reservoir city building, which requires the pro-spice civic and has a high iAWeight. This has a -2 water cost and provides +1 to the TC. If you have 5 Reservoirs built, you can build one Reservoir of Liet wonder which gives +5 to the TC. As the TC increases, squares near the Reservoir and RofL will spontaneously produce anchor grass on unimproved plots nearby, which is somewhat green. This will improve over time to the swordgrass bonus. Perhaps there is a third level which is similar to the vanilla wheat bonus, but is visibly more green. Perhaps there is a fourth level which is actually forest, although I do not think we need this.

The windtrap already prevents spice from appearing in any adjacent plot. The reservoir will have the same effect. The RofL will prevent spice from appearing in a 2 plot radius.

This does not achieve the goal of secret, distant reservoirs. It is also not obvious how the AI would combat raises to the TC, except indirectly through wars with pro-terraform civs. But it does achieve increasing green-ness of the map. The favored civic and iAIWeight will hopefully cause the pro-terraform civs to build it. The +1 hammer of the pro-spice civic will hopefully cause them to adopt it.

It is small, but seems implementable. What do you think?

I still think that the changing needs to be at the terrain level not improvement level. There are unlikely to be too many unimproved plots, in which case the map is not likely to get much greener. It would be better if the underlying terrain improved and then whatever improvements you have built stay in place on top of them. Is this much harder to achieve? I know we'd need to create the verdant versions of each terrain, but at least we know the graphics exist.

Additionally, I think we could tweak for flavour a bit. Not sure I like the term Reservoir, we could use the term Catchbasin which is definitely a Dune term. We can call the Catchbasin building (the renamed Food Warehouse), Water Reserve or something more boring. Catchbasins are the pools the Fremen keep for Terraforming so it is appropriate. Also, if would be good if we could come up with a nicer UI representation than just a counter. I think the Pro-Spice and Pro-Water civics should be called perhaps Spice Economy and Way of Liet or something like that.

Also, you could use this Coca Plant resource (http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=3765)as a placeholder for longer grass, but hopefully we can go the terrain road.

I still think that the changing needs to be at the terrain level not improvement level.

I think that in the mid to late game, the outside of the donut between the fat cross and the cultural border will be large enough to have these improvements. But terrain is just as easy. I still don't want to convert coast to land, but even doing that would be just a few more terrain types related to coast or ocean.

Also, if would be good if we could come up with a nicer UI representation than just a counter.

I don't have a recent (3.19) version of FFH, but I seem to recall the AC was a numeric value displayed in the end-of-turn button. I think a high percentage of DW players will also be familiar with FFH and the AC. If we copy how the FFH AC is reported, that should be fine.

I think the Pro-Spice and Pro-Water civics should be called perhaps Spice Economy and Way of Liet or something like that.

Sold.

I still don't want to convert coast to land, but even doing that would be just a few more terrain types related to coast or ocean.

I wouldn't want that either. Hopefully, we can create terrain that looks like the current desert waste/deep desert but with grass on it that blends in. Or perhaps we can change the terrain to grassland, etc on the land tiles, and just use the grass improvement stuff on the coast/ocean tiles.

It is small, but seems implementable. What do you think?

I like the idea, but agree with Deliverator that you need to either:
a) change things at the terrain level
b) add the grass improvements to *ocean* (ie desert) tiles.

Either of which will increase the water income of cities.

There is no benefit to the human player from getting grass spawning within cultural borders outside the fat cross, and so no reason why a human strategist should bother constructing buildings that drain their water income. The changes must improve fat-cross tiles.

I like Spice Economy and Way of Liet.

Oh, forgot:
c) Change things at the Feature level. Remember that if you're getting rid of tubers, there are no features; forest/flood plains, etc.
So this could change the tile yield without changing terrain type or knocking over existing improvements.

OK, I have most of this working. Oddly, the part which I cannot figure out is the part I thought would be simplest.

a. Added vanilla terrains for plains and grass. They do not blend right so there is something I have missed, but they work. Each mapscript will need to be changed to prevent these terrains from appearing on the initial map.

b. Added building for reservoir. It has a -2 water penalty and provides +1 happiness to cities on the same continent. It provides fresh water in all adjacent plots and no spice will appear there.

c. Added building for reservoir of liet. It has a -2 water penalty and provides +1 happiness to all cities. 2 reservoirs are required before any reservoirs of liet can be built. It provides fresh water in all adjacent plots and no spice will appear there. Using python, when a reservoir of liet is built the reservoir is destroyed, so it is like a building upgrade. (There may be a cleaner way to do this, but I could not find one.)

c. Added terraforming victory condition when 5 reservoirs of liet are built. I doubt any other mod in history has used this, but you can have a victory condition based purely on a number of buildings built. I think I am the first, because there is a typo *bug* in vanilla which prevents the victory screen from displaying when this type of victory condition is used.

d. Fixed the bug in vanilla, and also in RevDCM, which prevents the victory screen from displaying.

e. Each turn in python, compute the Terraforming Counter: 5 per reservoir plus 20 per reservoir of liet. (I simply display this with a transient message for now.) Each plot which is adjacent to a reservoir, or within 2 plots of a reservoir of liet, has a chance of a terrain upgrade. The percent is related to the TC and this will need to be tuned. An arid or desert plains plot upgrades to a vanilla plains plot (1 water, 1 hammer). A vanilla plains plot upgrades to a vanilla grass plot (2 water, no hammers).

So basically, build 5 reservoirs, your territory gets a little greener, build 5 reservoirs of liet, your territory gets green faster, and then you win. You can see the result in the attached screenshot.

The missing part is civics. I cannot find any way to limit buildings to civics, or limit techs to civics. So I have not added any civic yet. What I want is to prevent the reservoir of liet from being built, unless you have a civic. Any suggestions on how to do this?

I need to figure out why the blends don't work, and I need to playtest to set the speed at which nearby plots turn green. Also the vanilla plains texture is too close to our existing brown textures and it would be nice if the grass was even greener. And I need a better way to display the Terraform Counter in the user interface.

Sounds like a good start. Can we rename Reservoir to Catchbasin please?

Also, we can create a UB for the Fremen called Deathstills. This would give some positive amount of water (+2, +3 ?) to represent the reclaiming of water from the bodies of the dead. Not only would they have a preference for the Way of Liet, but they'd have a slight advantage towards the Terraforming Victory too.

The missing part is civics. I cannot find any way to limit buildings to civics, or limit techs to civics. So I have not added any civic yet. What I want is to prevent the reservoir of liet from being built, unless you have a civic.

I am pretty sure that the Total Realism mod (in Warlords) and I think the Rise of Mankind mod in BTS have buildings that require a civic. I think the Agora building requires the Republic civic, and the Slave Market requires the slavery civic.

Sounds like a good start. Can we rename Reservoir to Catchbasin please? Also, we can create a UB for the Fremen called Deathstills.

OK, but you renamed the food warehouse to catchbasin, so what should I name that?

Good idea to add a Deathstill UB. It will give the Fremen a pretty big city growth advantage if it is +3 water, but we can try +2.

OK, but you renamed the food warehouse to catchbasin, so what should I name that?

Let's call that one Reservoir. I can't think of anything better at the minute.

I need to figure out why the blends don't work, and I need to playtest to set the speed at which nearby plots turn green.

I have a strong hunch that this is to with the LayerOrder tag in TerrainArtInfo (Terrain Art Defines). I think you need to make sure no two terrain types have the same LayerOrder. Try playing with it.

I think you need to make sure no two terrain types have the same LayerOrder. Try playing with it.

That is probably it. The hard edges are occurring where vanilla grass, touches the arid terrain which is a recoloring of grass. So they are on the same layer. I will try this out.

Along with the other terrains you may be working on, two levels of green for terraforming would be awesome.

OK, the code is all working now. The way of preventing civs with the wrong civic is a little roundabout; I used the python callback cannotBuild to prevent it. There is no opportunity to pass a help string for this, it will have to go into the documentation.

It would be nice to get an sdk with HatedCivic (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8246243&postcount=4) in it, but that can be added later. I will now do some final QA and upload 1.3.3.

(EDIT: Hrm, I wrote a long post complaining about slow runtime but this was user error on my part. Never mind.)

davidlallen,
ill code you a new sdk with the civics on friday, along with some new revdcm fixes.

Would it be possible to make the terraforming victory based on the % of tiles that have been changed to the greener terrain? Or is that check too expensive? I find the build 7 buildings solution slightly arbitrary...

yeah good idea deliverator!

it need sdk coding isnt it?

It does not need sdk coding, checking the entire map for something can happen once per turn without a performance impact. However, I am not sure what should happen if several players are working towards this victory. Suppose player A has been working towards the victory and gets 2.9% of the terrain converted, then player B gets his first catchbasin built and pushes the number up to 3%.

I agree I am not terribly happy with the seven building solution either; but if we can agree on a better alternative which accounts for multiple players, we can certainly change it.

Perhaps make it the percentage of global terrain that is terraformed and within your borders. That way you have to control a certain proportion of the land and then terraform it.

Maybe it should be some kind of team victory. If multiple players each have 1% terraformed within their borders, that should count for something.

Do other folks feel that a count of terraformed squares by one player should be the condition?

I'm skeptical about having the number of terraformed squares should be the victory condition; I think a building victory is likely to work better. It will be very tough to get a condition that isn't too hard or too easy to fulfill, and that enemies will attempt to frustrate.
You'll have to play with spawn rates for terraforming and build times for the anchor grass improvement. Its pretty easy to spam lots of workers and have them build lots of stuff.

But if you do go this way, I'd suggest that you have all non-allied (including vassals, defensive pacts) factions declare war when a civ gets near the victory threshold.
You'd need to make it a proportion of total world tiles within the borders of the player.
You should scale it somehow for map size, and maybe number of players.

Also; will it depend on changed underlying terrain type (occurring based on the wonders you build in your cities?)
How will the the anchor grass mechanic interlink with the terrain type mechanic?

Shared victory doesn't really make sense in terms of civ very well, unless you have a permanent alliance.

Thanks for the feedback. I have thrown you off a little bit by changing from an anchor grass improvement, to a terrain type which appears automatically; this was suggested by Deliverator in post #39 in this thread. There is nothing to build, so no reason to spam workers. I am not completely happy with this but it was implementable. The problem (mentioned in the spacer guild mechanic thread) is that now there is nothing to pillage. The only way to slow down a terraforming victory is by capturing the cities with the improvements.

Good suggestion about having non-allies declare war when somebody comes near the victory threshold. The AI's in vanilla do not appear to pay too much attention to this; that is, I rarely see a declaration of war just because one player is close to winning.

In Fury Road, there is a victory condition similar to religious victory, based on percentage of population converted to your religion. Many players will intentionally convert to another player's religion for the diplomacy bonus, which can cause a loss of the game. So I added popups when one player reaches 25% and 50% of this condition; at least players could no longer claim they were surprised by a loss. The Fury Road AI's will also cancel any open borders at the 50% threshold, so that your missionaries can no longer travel freely; but that is the only specific handling for non-allies getting close to victory.

In DW, we may get somewhere once the "hated civic" is in place, but again that is kind of indirect. Does anybody know if vanilla victory conditions actually trigger any change in AI behavior?

I'd like an enemy to be able to slow down a terraforming victory. Suppose that instead of the improved terrain type appearing automatically, it will only appear when the plot contains either a food/town improvement, or a new anchor grass improvement; and if you pillage the improvement, the upgraded terrain disappears. Then you would have to build a few workers and put them to work building anchor grass. Since the catchbasin only improves terrain adjacent to cities, and the reservoir only improves terrain in your BFC, at least we would not require workers to go build improvements outside the BFC.

The AI will not recognize any linkage between the anchor grass improvement and the victory condition. But maybe, if anchor grass gives +1 food and is buildable anywhere, the workers will build it if they have nothing better to do. The advantage of making this pillage-able seems worth an experiment.

This can relate to the spacer guild paradrop raider mechanic. I can write AI for the raider which will deepstrike the raider to any location where there are pillage-able terraform improvements. Then hopefully it will just do its thing and pillage.

The problem (mentioned in the spacer guild mechanic thread) is that now there is nothing to pillage.

Worse than that; there is no active player involvement in achieving victory. If all you have to do is sit there while your terrain terraforms, then its not a very satisfying victory.

I'd like an enemy to be able to slow down a terraforming victory. Suppose that instead of the improved terrain type appearing automatically, it will only appear when the plot contains either a food/town improvement, or a new anchor grass improvement; and if you pillage the improvement, the upgraded terrain disappears. Then you would have to build a few workers and put them to work building anchor grass. Since the catchbasin only improves terrain adjacent to cities, and the reservoir only improves terrain in your BFC, at least we would not require workers to go build improvements outside the BFC.

This sounds promising in fixing the issue, but these improvements only happen in the BFC, then terraforming only happens in the BFC, which is a problem for a victory condition that requires terrain to be transformed. +1 food from anchor grass also sounds pretty low relative to +4 commerce from towns or +2-3 hammers from solar farm or turbines.
Are you making the anchor grass buildable on desert tiles? I think this is needed.

I definitely like the idea of pillaging terraforming. Can you code checks into happening after a pillage, so you don't have to have constantly check every tile? More efficient.
So, have anchor grass buildable on ocean/desert tiles and land tiles (2 improvements if necessary).
Then, have a chance of any tile within the borders of a player who has the Pro-Water civic have a chance of changing into a terraformed tile (grassland, plains, whatever), if it has anchor grass on it, or a town on it, or a complex/drip farm/dew collector/windtrap. This chance is increased if the tile is near a reservoir or various other conditions. (Eg: still have a number of spaceship-part style projects; the more you build of these, the greater is the terraforming chance).
Then check, onPillage, the underlying tile type; if its a grassland, turn it back into the unterraformed grassland substitute, if its a plains, turn it into unterraformed plains, etc.
The terraformed versions give +1 water over their base versions.

This way, there is somethnig you can do to increase your terraforming rate; build anchor grass and build the spaceship projects and build reservoirs. And there is somethnig you can do to stop it; pillage enemy terraformed tiles.

Something to consider about pillaging; I highly suggest thinking about something like the Raiders promotion from Fall Further; units with the pillage promotion automatically pillage (without spending a movement point) any tile they move into of any civ they are at war with. (Check it OnMove).

Then, give this raider promotion to some drop troops.

Here's a great passage from page 368 of Dune, that says a lot about terraforming (and I believe confirms the presence of ice at the poles):

'It has been calculated with precision,' Stilgar whispered. 'We know to within a million decalitres how much we need. When we have it, we shall change the face of Arrakis.'

A hushed whisper of response lifted from the troop: 'Bi-lal kaifa.'

'We will trap the dunes beneath grass plantings,' Stilgar said, his voice growing stronger. 'We will tie the water into the soil with trees and undergrowth.'

'Bi-lal kaifa,' intoned the troop.

'Each year the polar ice retreats,' Stilgar said.

'Bi-lal kaifa,' they chanted.

'We will make a homeword of Arrakis - with melting lenses at the poles, with lakes in the temparate zones, and only the deep desert for the maker and his spice.'

'Bi-lal kaifa.'

'And no man ever again shall want for water. It shall be his for dipping from well or pond or lake or canal. It shall run down through the qanats to feed our plants. It shall be there for any man to take. It shall be his for holding out his hand.'

'Bi-lal kaifa.'

I'm wondering whether we could have another terraforming improvement built on polar terrain called Melting Lense - (the FFH2 graphic, Mirror of Heaven, could be used). This would produce a fair amount of water, but destroy the polar ice around it. Once the ice is gone, it can be terraformed as normal. I like the idea of having a diminising polar ice cap as the game goes on. This might only make sense on the Arrakis mapscript.

I have locally changed terraforming so that it only happens on an improved plot, and if there is an unimproved plot, the terraforming is removed. Any kind of improvement counts, including solar farms. That means you can pillage, and slow down terraforming. Strictly, this does not slow down the terraforming victory, which happens when you have seven buildings. But if you want the benefit from terraforming, you have to build improvements. I have also added an improvement, anchor grass, which gives one water and can be built on any land terrain (including desert and rugged). I have not autoplayed it much yet, but this "should" allow the AI to build if it cannot find any better improvement.

I am thinking of another change, but it involves the AI having "perfect vision". In order to slow down the terraforming victory indirectly, I would like the AI's to get less friendly for each Reservoir of Liet built, even if the AI's cannot really detect the building. This may not be too bad a violation; for example, when World Wonders are built, there is a global message every player can see.

Some of the AI's are against terraforming, either because it is a Hated Civic, or because the AI has independently chosen the Spice Industry civic value. Each such AI would get a -2 diplomacy for each Reservoir you own. This uses python pPlayer.AI_setAttitudeExtra and TXT_KEY_MISC_ATTITUDE_EXTRA_BAD. The message is:

-6: "Your terraforming is threatening the spice!"

In addition, when a civ builds five reservoirs, all these AI's would declare war unless they are friendly (not bloody likely!) or a vassal.

What do you think of these changes? Too much, bad idea, not enough?

I have no problem with this; IIRC, you could see how many spaceship parts had been built by the enemy AIs. You can also easily detect the locations of the reservoirs because they have changed the tiles all around them.

I'd also make sure that they tech requirements for the second of the terraforming buildings was much higher; the first one (1 tile ring) can be quite low, but the second should be much higher - or there shoudl be a third one that is much higher that actually is needed for the tforming victory.

A couple of issues with the mechanic as it stands though:
a) I've noticed that sometimes building a reservoir turns the surrounding tiles to plains (+1 water), and then immediately the next turn to grasslands (+2 water). Shoudln't it take longer? Or have some tiles stay plains?
b) It doesn't work on many terrain types; desert (land tiles) and badlands and such; how about these still terraform to a new but weaker terrain type? For the visuals alone.
c) Should the number of reservoirs needed to win be scaled to map size, like domination victory % are? So on larger maps you need more cities/reservoirs to win?

You can also easily detect the locations of the reservoirs because they have changed the tiles all around them.

My only concern is that this kind of implies perfect satellite surveillance, and rules out the idea of Fremen hiding their work by bribing the spacer guild.

I'd also make sure that they tech requirements for the second of the terraforming buildings was much higher

That seems fine.

a) I've noticed that sometimes building a reservoir turns the surrounding tiles to plains (+1 water), and then immediately the next turn to grasslands (+2 water). Shoudln't it take longer? Or have some tiles stay plains?

There is a bug in the numeric calculation in 1.3.6 and previous. Instead of a 2% chance to upgrade after your first reservoir, it is 98%. I will release the fix in my next patch; maybe it will be too slow then.

b) It doesn't work on many terrain types; desert (land tiles) and badlands and such; how about these still terraform to a new but weaker terrain type? For the visuals alone.

It occurs on badlands, but not rugged or desert. Badlands upgrades to arid first. I can apply the same to the other two.

c) Should the number of reservoirs needed to win be scaled to map size, like domination victory % are? So on larger maps you need more cities/reservoirs to win?

I will see if I can find a way to implement this. I don't know how the scalable victory parameters work, it may be in the sdk.

Changing these percentages will fix a lot of these.

Another thought; there needs to be some way to prevent exploitation of civic switching. So you can't just go pro-tform, build the reservoirs, then switch to pro-spice and still run a good spice economy.

So the civic check probably needs to get tied into the terraform % chance. If its 2% chance per turn, that needs to be 2% chance per turn IFF civic = pro-tform.

For further differentiation, and desert rugged could go to badlands, then to arid, then plains, then grassland.

Another thought; there needs to be some way to prevent exploitation of civic switching.

As mentioned in the release note, if you have a reservoir and you are not running paradise civic, the reservoir is destroyed at the end of the turn. It is terrible, what can happen when your civ goes into anarchy :-)

For further differentiation, and desert rugged could go to badlands, then to arid, then plains, then grassland.

I like this, but I need a little more infrastructure to remember what the original terrain type was. If it goes up via terraforming, and then the reservoir is destroyed, it needs to go back down to the right level.

if you have a reservoir and you are not running paradise civic, the reservoir is destroyed at the end of the turn

Cool, that works.

I like this, but I need a little more infrastructure to remember what the original terrain type was.

Hmm, good point. Well, one way would be for the terraforming to only degrade by one step if pillaged. Or have it never degrade past arid (the best non-terraformed terrain type).
Another would be to actually have different upgrade versions depending on what the core was; you could have multiple grasslands that looked the same and had the same benefits but were actually different terrain types.
I guess the last would be if you could actually create an array somewhere that stored the base terrain type of every tile on the planet and store that somewhere.
But no idea how to do that.

Those diplomacy changes sound great, David. Very appropriate that other civs react to you building Reservoirs and approaching that victory condition.

Cheers,
Sword

This thread has been dead for a while, but the relevant history is here and I am sure most people will find it.

The present implementation of fresh water and terraforming is slightly complicated and parts of the complexity are not really useful. This post shows the current design, a proposed new design, and some other good suggestions I don't plan to implement just yet.

Current design

Fresh water is spread by wells, windtraps and catchbasins to all adjacent plots. The sdk does not spread fresh water to coast/ocean; so if one of these objects is adjacent to desert waste, the desert waste does not count as fresh water.

The effects of fresh water on your economy are pretty limited, which is by mistake; it should have more effect. In 1.5 the qanat can be built and gives +1 water. In 1.5.1 (not released yet) I think the qanat will be removed, and cottages on fresh water will have +1 hammer. Anyway, there is some effect.

Spice and sandworms will not enter certain areas. They will not enter fresh water. But since the game does not count fresh water in coast, they must check separately to avoid fresh water generators adjacent to coast. They will not come within two plots of a Reservoir of Liet.

Terraforming will only occur within one plot of a catchbasin or two plots of a Reservoir of Liet. Only "rock" terrain upgrades, so that I can easily downgrade the terraforming if the plot is no longer near a Reservoir of Liet. Grass downgrades to plains to rock, and then stops; I do not need to store what was the original terrain.

Furthermore terraforming will only occur if there is an improvement on the plot. That is why the otherwise useless "anchor grass" improvement exists. If there is a plot near a Reservoir of Liet, and you cannot think of anything else to build usefully there, you can build this, and then the terrain will improve. Part of the motivation for this was to enable pro-spice people, who fear terraforming, to pillage your plots and slow down the terraforming. But most people don't realize this and don't care, since to have any real effect on terraforming you need to raze the city with the Reservoir.

Proposed new design

I am thinking of combining these three effects: fresh water, spice/sandworm "do not enter", and terraforming improvement into a simpler fresh water effect.

Wells, windtraps and catchbasins will spread fresh water within all adjacent plots, even if they are coast or ocean.

Reservoir of Liet will spread fresh water within two plots, even if they are coast or ocean. (There is going to be a trick about removing this fresh water, when the Reservoir is destroyed somehow, but I will have to figure out how.)

If you have the arrakis paradise civic, any rock plot with fresh water will terraform. So plots which are only near windtraps, and not near any city, would also terraform. If needed we can lower the chance to terraform so the total amount of terraformed terrain stays similar to today's.

Take the anchor grass improvement out of the game since the complexity it introduces today is not actually known / used / needed.

Good ideas for the future

Anchor grass should speed up transformation. That is possible, but it is unlikely the AI will understand it.

Worse terrain, such as rugged or badlands, should also upgrade, but it may take more time for them to upgrade compared to rock. This is possible, but then I need to store the original terrain type in order to undo back to the proper level.

If you have the arrakis paradise civic, any rock plot with fresh water will terraform. So plots which are only near windtraps, and not near any city, would also terraform. If needed we can lower the chance to terraform so the total amount of terraformed terrain stays similar to today's.

Hmm. Interesting ideas.

Potential issues:
i) a large number of plots will already be adjacent to either windtraps or groundwater; usually at least 50%, sometimes much more. This means that there would be very little incentive to build catchbasins and reservoirs, since you can also get most of their benefits without them. Potentially you could tie the global terraform rates into the number of catchbasins and reservoirs you controlled, so there was also at least a passive bonus? And just give the building a high AI rating so that they build it anyway.

ii) fresh water access doesn't have any graphical indication. It would be annoying if terraform chance and terrain yields were significantly affected by a mechanic that was invisible except for mouseovers. Maybe there could be some kind of visual indicator, like the aqueduct building water channels? So these channels could go from the windtrap and groundwater well into adjacent tiles?
iii) why is important that desert tiles gain fresh water? Are you going to have desert waste tiles change somehow, like having oasis features appear in them for a +1 water bonus?
iv) potentially you could also have other features, like low chances of a scrub forest appearing, with a +1 hammer bonus.
v) interactions with the mapscript/heightmap changes. If there are terrain types rock, rugged, saltpan, graben with mesa and sink terrain changes, which ones should be effected, and what should they upgrade to?
One way would be to have graben-sink, rock-sink, rugged-sink, rock and rugged all upgrade into plains and then grassland as current, but saltpan and mesa tiles are unaffected.

You could just allow them all to deplete back to rock after pillage if needed, since the variation is fairly small; it doesn't really matter if you have rugged -> plains -> grassland downgrade to plains, downgrade to rock. Its not that important to store the original terrain type; arguably once a rugged has transformed into a plains, you've also been clearing the land and such, so its basically rock.
You could also have rugged terrain have a lower chance of turning into a plains than the others.

The +1 hammer bonus from sinks should be maintained, otherwise shifting from a 2h1c graben/sink to a 2f grassland could even be a downgrade.

there would be very little incentive to build catchbasins and reservoirs, since you can also get most of their benefits without them. Potentially you could tie the global terraform rates into the number of catchbasins and reservoirs you controlled, so there was also at least a passive bonus?

The incentive to build RoL is to win, and catchbasin is a prerequisite for that so it takes longer. I guess I did not mention the Terraforming Counter in the previous post, but the game counts the total number of catchbasins and RoL to decide the percent change of terrain upgrading. This is the global terraform rate you mention; I would keep that part of the design.

ii) fresh water access doesn't have any graphical indication. It would be annoying if terraform chance and terrain yields were significantly affected by a mechanic that was invisible except for mouseovers.

Fresh water in vanilla is also invisible unless you mouseover; but players quickly learn it is adjacent to all lakes and rivers. Similarly, with the exception of city buildings, you would quickly learn it is adjacent to all wells and windtraps.

iii) why is important that desert tiles gain fresh water? Are you going to have desert waste tiles change somehow, like having oasis features appear in them for a +1 water bonus?

To unify the sandworm/spice "do not enter" check. Presently there are three separate steps, which is complex. Fresh water? Adjacent to windtrap/well? Within two plots of RoL?

You could just allow them all to deplete back to rock after pillage if needed, since the variation is fairly small

I'm not sure about that. It allows an exploit: if you have a lot of rugged terrain, change to paradise civic until all your rugged changes to plains, then change civics back.

This is the global terraform rate you mention; I would keep that part of the design.

I would not make this global; I would make it per player. You need to be capturing the benefits yourself from building more catchbasins in your city, not be spreading them out to anyone who adopts the civic. Otherwise there is little incentive to build them.

Catchbasins and Reservoirs need to have their own benefits separate from the victory condition.
Otherwise there is no point in building a catchbasin (with its water penalty) until the late game when you pursue the victory condition.

Fresh water in vanilla is also invisible unless you mouseover; but players quickly learn it is adjacent to all lakes and rivers. Similarly, with the exception of city buildings, you would quickly learn it is adjacent to all wells and windtraps.

But in vanilla fresh water doesn't effect tile yields, with the exception of farms in the very late game, and even then farms are the resource you are using to spread fresh water.
And in your proposal you also get fresh water from catchbasin/reservoir, and you can't identify the location of those (and which tiles have fresh water) without going into the city.
Unless you gave them a very large obvious building graphic?

Besides, lakes and rivers obviously provide fresh water, and even graphically look like fresh water. Windtraps and catchbasins aren't nearly so obvious.

To unify the sandworm/spice "do not enter" check.
Ok.

It allows an exploit: if you have a lot of rugged terrain, change to paradise civic until all your rugged changes to plains, then change civics back.
Not much of an exploit; in order to terraform you must build an improvement on the tile, and then wait a long time.
And the only reason why rugged is worse than rock is because of the longer improvement construction time. And you already built the improvement.

So the only possible gain here would be from building a cheap improvement, waiting a few dozen turns, changing civics, and then changing back and building a more expensive improvement on the tile. Hardly worth it to save a few worker turns.

If you're worried about exploits, then there is a much larger one with Harkonnen slaves; you can have them work on an expensive improvement until 1 turn before they finish, then move them away so they don't finish it, and finish the thing with a normal worker.
There are always going to be minor exploits.

And isn't there a much larger exploit? If you don't actually need catchbasins to maintain terraforming, then you switch to paradise and build some catchbasins, get some terraforming done, and then change back (losing the catchbasins), but unless your tile is pillaged you maintain the terraformed grasslands.

Another thought:
If you're going back to having Paradise civic terraform plots anywhere (ie not just in BFCs), then why don't you return to the 3% (or x%) rule for terraforming victory; you must have 3% of the world's land territory be grasslands and inside your cultural borders.

Rather than needing Y reservoirs.

So you build reservoirs and catchbasins to speed up the terraforming within your own borders.

And make sure that they are documented in game as doing such.

I would not make this global; I would make it per player. You need to be capturing the benefits yourself from building more catchbasins in your city, not be spreading them out to anyone who adopts the civic.

In FFH, hell terrain is a global counter which is shared among players. In DW, the global ecology does not care from within whose border the moisture is coming from.

And isn't there a much larger exploit? If you don't actually need catchbasins to maintain terraforming, then you switch to paradise and build some catchbasins, get some terraforming done, and then change back (losing the catchbasins), but unless your tile is pillaged you maintain the terraformed grasslands.

Another omission from the above post, but it is captured elsewhere in the thread; you lose terraformed terrain *either* by having no improvement, or by changing away from the paradise civic.

If you're going back to having Paradise civic terraform plots anywhere (ie not just in BFCs), then why don't you return to the 3% (or x%) rule for terraforming victory; you must have 3% of the world's land territory be grasslands and inside your cultural borders.

The earlier reason for not doing this was that the AI will not understand about building windtraps and other improvements outside its BFCs.

In FFH, hell terrain is a global counter which is shared among players. In DW, the global ecology does not care from within whose border the moisture is coming from.

In FFH, factions benefit/suffer differently from the rising Armageddon counter, and no-one except Sheaim really has any incentives to deliberately devote resources to raising it (through the Elegy of the Sheaim ritual). Sheaim have incentives to build Elegy rituals, because they benefit from a rising AC while their rivals suffer.

But if building more catchbasins helps many of your rivals as much as it helps you, there isn't much point in doing it; better to just free-ride on the other civs.

As for realism; terraforming Arrakis isn't putting moisture out into the atmosphere; its using the water you have stored to irrigate plant growth and try to start generating a self-sustaining ecology on a local level.

You make these plantations and palmeries and grass growth in your own territory.
So absolutely from a realism perspective it matters who is storing the water, because they control where the water gets used.

The terrain transformation represents the success of ecological projects on the local level, producing plants in the area.

So, from both gameplay and realism, it makes more sense that the catchbasins/reservoirs benefit the person who built them, rather than just anyone.

Reanimating this thread. In the 1.5 feedback thread, we have discussed (again) about changing the terraforming victory condition. This thread is the more appropriate one to discuss that, since some of the previous design discussions are in this thread.

In 1.5.4, terraforming spreads to any fresh water plot; catchbasins and wells spread fresh water within one plot; reservoirs of liet spread fresh water within 2 plots; and victory comes to any civ with 7 reservoirs of liet. Several players have commented that this victory is too easy. You can choose the Private Property civic, shut down your economy, and hurry the reservoirs without much trouble. Several players have suggested that the victory condition should be terraforming 3% of the planet's land area inside your own cultural borders.

As discussed earlier in this thread and also in the older spacer guild mechanic thread, this condition only makes sense if there is a way for other players to fight it. As currently defined, terraforming is a terrain type and there is no way for other players to pillage it. We could change the pillage action to remove terraforming, but the AI would not intentionally use this to prevent a terraforming victory. We could add an auto-pillage type action, so that any enemy walking on a terraformed plot would automatically un-terraform it; but again the AI would not use this intentionally.

So, the question for discussion is: suppose we changed the terraforming victory to happen as soon as 3% of the total land area is terraformed by one player. Would this be an improvement over the current situation, or only a different wrong answer? What is the right way to implement a terraforming victory?

condition should be terraforming 3% of the planet's land area inside your own cultural borders.

To clarify: 3% might not be enough, I would say X% for now. X will probably need to be > 3% (though keep in mind that only rock, rugged and graben/salt can be terraformed; polar and mesa can not, and rugged takes a long time).

this condition only makes sense if there is a way for other players to fight it.

This doesn't make sense to me.
a) This condition is no harder to fight than against than the 7 reservoirs condition.
Effectively, the condition isn't going to be able to be met without a bunch of reservoirs, otherwise not enough tiles will have fresh water.
Invading a terraformer to take away some of their terraformed land will work, conquering cities with reservoirs will work, or sending in spies to destroy the reservoir catchbasin building (which should remove fresh water from many tiles and thus cancel their terraforming progress). In fact its easier to fight.
In the 7-reservoir method, blowing up a reservoir can just have it replaced with no real loss.
In the terraforming method, when the reservoir blows up, lots of terraformed tiles will no longer have fresh water and so will degrade, which will take a long time to terraform back up to grassland again.

b) The condition also isn't really any harder to fight against than a space-race victory, its just that terraforming can't easily be hurried by the player.

The AI won't intentionally stop a reservoir or space-race victory either, other than through normal war. AI won't deliberately work to stop *any* victory conditions; your friends won't fail to vote for you to stop you winning a diplomatic victory, members of your faith won't suddenly switch faiths and start inquisitioning their own cities to stop you winning a religious victory, and so forth.

So I don't see the problem.

It would also be easy to create an event trigger when you get close, that has all non-Arrakis paradise users declare war on you (ignoring vassals, allies, etc.).

The way I would put it is this; with the 7-reservoir method, you build the reservoirs and then win instantly. With the X-tiles terraformed method, you need to build a bunch of reservoirs *and* then wait for quite some time while the terraforming occurs. And there is no real way that this terraforming can be rushed, which eliminates the cheese of the rush-built reservoirs.

I think this would definitely be an improvement. It is more fluff-worthy, it means that victory takes *time* as well as hammers, and it can be counteracted effectively by the human player with spies (is there some way to give the AI a high preference for destroying reservoirs with spies?).
The trick will be in getting terraform speeds right, and getting X% right.

* * *

If we went this way, we would need to scale terraform time by game speed, and we would probably need the 3-range fresh water from reservoirs.

And we would probably need to make it X% of *non-Dunes* tiles. The outlying Dunes tiles on an Arrakis map (that are there just for aesthetics) shouldn't really count towards this. It would be nice if we could exclude them from domination/holy war type victories too.

Just a few thoughts from me.

A % of terraformed tiles in the world is the best idea, I think. I'd say take some example from FF's gone to hell victory - some method of tracking "responsibility" for terraforming, and awarding the victory to whoever contributed most, when most of the planet (read, >50% at least) is terraformed.

For it to be feasible, terraforming should be able to spread outside of your territory, and across the desert waste.

There need to be some consequences for doing this though. The sand worms aren't really menacing enough, since all they do is run around angrily outside your land accomplishing nothing. Maybe the sandworms should go crazy as more of the planet is terraformed, and start to become braver in their counterattacks, like somehow venturing onto "land" and eating terraformed plots back down to desert

A % of terraformed tiles in the world is the best idea, I think. I'd say take some example from FF's gone to hell victory - some method of tracking "responsibility" for terraforming, and awarding the victory to whoever contributed most, when most of the planet (read, >50% at least) is terraformed.

This seems infeasible to me. There is no real good way to get terraforming to spread outside your own territory, or to track "who caused it" (how would you even define that?).

And I see no reason for it to not be based off terraforming within your own cultural borders.

And David is very very against desert waste tiles getting any terraforming.

Sandworms going crazy makes no sense. Sandworms avoid water; it is poison to them, so there is no way that worms could start attacking a terraformer, whose lands are rich in water and plant life.
Like species facing habitat loss today on earth, the worms' response to terraforming is.... to die.

If it's possible to account for all non-desert tiles from the start (i.e. the mod can know exactly at each moment how much terraformable tiles are terraformed), then the goal of controlling x% of terraformable tiles would be reasonable. Granted, you can't tell which civ caused the terraformed land, but all the more reason for civs to fight over good land. This goal should account for a non-domination win though (i.e. the x% should be less than what's needed for domination, preferably half or less to make it possible), otherwise it would just mean a domination victory.

having just completed a terraforming victory i just want to say that it might be a bit too easy to win. i *never* finish a game, let alone win, though i admit i was only on noble difficulty.

id suggest:
making the 7 final buildings more difficult to get (i was able to rush them all with great techmen)
increase the rate the land terraforms and have the victory trigger only when x% of the world is terraformed. as it is i had only terraformed about a third of my territory before i won.
make another step *after* the 7 buildings to complete a project which slowly physically turns the world into grass, including dunes and such. it should be after this step that victory can be accomplished. give those folling the Spice Future an opposing project and their own counter to terraforming.
or a combination of all of these. i think a final project is my favourite option.

Waking up this thread again. With a suggestion from The_J, I have now figured out how to add a terraforming victory condition by percent of land terraformed. See this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=340766) for details. I can now set a number of plots as a threshold, and award a victory to the first player who has that many plots terraformed to grassland. The AI will not intentionally pursue this. Since Reservoirs of Liet have a high AIWeight, I think it will happen unintentionally well enough.

I did a few runs of the current mapscripts to find out the total area and what percentage of the map is land. The percentage of "dune" terrain is quite small, actually, and although I excluded it from land it really doesn't seem to matter. It may be that the arrakis mapscript broke, but both archipelago and arrakis scripts generate a single digit number of plots of dune, like 3-8 plots, regardless of what settings I tried.

The attached spreadsheet shows my runs. There are a lot of variables and I don't have any way to automatically execute the runs. So I only picked a few variables and gave up when I got bored of repeating "click on mapscript options, launch game, exit to main menu". I am sure that the exact numbers will vary a little and we should have more runs to get any kind of statistical significance, but I don't think it matters that much.

I need a little bit of help on deciding the right threshold. Since the books refer to a "three percent solution" I am tempted to just set the threshold to 3% of the map area. The "three" column of the spreadsheet shows this.

I would probably alert the player to an AI pursuing this, by giving a popup when the first player reaches 1%. I have had problems in the past where an AI pursues this victory, and the first time player suddenly and unexpectedly loses, without even knowing they were in danger.

What do you think?

I think running some simulations, either in-game or with a toy model, will help us here.

Its very hard to think about an appropriate number of tiles without doing that.

Also, we need to finalize whether or not wells will give fresh water access (and allow terraforming) before we even think about tuning this. It will make a huge difference.

[Example thought experiment:
As a thought experiment, suppose:
Standard map size, so around, what, 3600 tiles? Call it 30% land, for 1080 land tiles.
3% of the total map tiles = 108 land tiles.
8 groundwater tiles with 4 tiles on average, with wells on average by turn 120.
6 catchbasins, with 3 non-mesa non-well tiles on average, completed on average by turn 220.
5 reservoirs, with 5 non-overlapping tiles on average not irrigated by wells or catchbasins, completed on average by turn 300.
Transformation rate = 1% + 0.25% per catchbasins + 0.5% per reservoir.
Tiles must be transformed twice to get to grassland.

This allows for 75 potential grassland tiles, and these tiles will be reached somewhere around turn 340.

On the graphical side of terraforming, I'm wondering whether we could replace the Sword Grass bonus with Saguaro (it will be quick to make art from the Scrub graphic) and then use the current Sword Grass graphic as a feature representing Anchor Grass. The final Grassland state would change the underlying terrain. What do you think?

So, the "anchor grass" *terrain* type would be rock with the anchor grass graphic?

That could look weird for sink/graben tiles that terraform to anchor grass.

Or are you abandoning anchor grass as a terrain type, and trying to make it a feature, that can show up on multiple terrain types?

How would that work with tile yields?

Or are you abandoning anchor grass as a terrain type, and trying to make it a feature, that can show up on multiple terrain types?

How would that work with tile yields?

That is what I'm suggesting. If it's not doable, then I'll have a go at making the terrain art more distinctive.

The python code for terraforming is nice and symmetric with two levels of terraforming improvement which are both terrains. It will be much messier if I make the first level a feature and the second level a terrain.

I think the main goal is to have the two levels more visually distinctive; for example, make anchor grass yellower, or give it brown patches so it doesn't look as extensive.

If you also want to use the saguaro from the FF scrub forest terrain we found as a replacement for one of the food resources, that's great. Swapping those is easy. I haven't thought of a useful way to add the scrub forest as a feature. It doesn't seem like a hammer bonus or a chop bonus makes sense for saguaro.

I think the main goal is to have the two levels more visually distinctive; for example, make anchor grass yellower, or give it brown patches so it doesn't look as extensive.

OK, I'll do that.

It will be much messier if I make the first level a feature and the second level a terrain.

I think the main goal is to have the two levels more visually distinctive; for example, make anchor grass yellower, or give it brown patches so it doesn't look as extensive.

I agree.

I haven't thought of a useful way to add the scrub forest as a feature. It doesn't seem like a hammer bonus or a chop bonus makes sense for saguaro.

I don't think the FFH scrub forest as a feature on grassland would work visually.
But there must be some other forest art out there that might make sense with a hammer bonus. Maybe the New Forest from FFH? We can still call it scrub forest, but have art with some green plants.

But there must be some other forest art out there that might make sense with a hammer bonus. Maybe the New Forest from FFH? We can still call it scrub forest, but have art with some green plants.

The Light Forest from Colonization could be worth a go. I'll give it a try.

If not there are loads of trees/bushes in other games. If you can specify what a Dune +1 hammer forest might look like I can make something.

Let's take one small step back. What are we trying to solve? What I want is more graphical differentiation between anchor grass and grassland. A long time back, like 1.2, we were discussing if initial, unterraformed terrain should have "something" on it like vanilla forest, to give a hammer or chop bonus. But we could not find anything. If you find a bush or light tree graphic, how would we use it in the game?

My feeling is a scrub forest would be a features with a low chance of spawning on grassland tiles, probably in grassland sink, in a similar manner to the oasis/lake.

I feel no need for a chop bonus, the goal of these forests isn't to chop them down.

The design goal of such a feature would be:
a) Increase the terraforming feel, changing from a dry harsh landscape to one with thriving living things
b) restore the balance of sinks being superior to regular flatland terrain. At the moment, graben is superior to rock, but Grassland Sink is the same as regular Grassland.
c) Make sinks (with their shelter from winds) feel more special

How's this for the anchor grass texture?

Figuring out the tessalation for the blend texture files is complicated so there are one or two slightly square looking bits, but I don't want to spend all day figuring it out.

That looks great.

out of curiosity, is there any reason why the actual dunes dont terraform as well? it looks a little odd having grassland butting directly onto desert. im guessing there is a game play reason for it?

graphically itd be nice if turned into something like 'reclaimed desert' or something, even if its just a graphical change and not affect gameplay.

out of curiosity, is there any reason why the actual dunes dont terraform as well? it looks a little odd having grassland butting directly onto desert. im guessing there is a game play reason for it?

Do you mean the terrain called "dunes", which is very rare? Or do you mean the terrain called "desert waste" and "deep desert"? Desert waste is really coast, and deep desert is really ocean. It would cause major changes in pathfinding, etc, if water plots changed to land plots during the game. That is not fatal, but I think it would be kind of weird. Also, having grass appear on deep sand does not seem ""ecologically possible"".

Perhaps we could add a "chrome" terrain which is desert waste plus a little bit of grass, so that there is a more subtle transition. But it would not have any effect on gameplay; it would be equivalent to different types of tree in vanilla forest terrain.

The discussion turns very "graphically" now.
Deliverators "new" anchor-grassland looks much better, although imo it could be a bit more "yellowish", too ;)
Also making desert waste adjacent to terraformed tiles look different is a good idea...

...but more important (to me) is redefining the terra-forming victory. I've also just finished a Fremen terraforming victory on prince-level. As you can "time" the building of the resrvoirs of liet, the diplomatic malus, they are giving, doesn't matter that much. I also rushed the last reservoir, but with privat property. In my game there were 4 or 5 turns between the finishing of the first and last reservoirs, so I had just a few turns diplomatic mali. I could have timed even better, letting them all finish in one turn, but I didn't matter about that before.
IMO there should also be "something" after having built the reservoirs. Maybe the "green-planet-project" or something.
I'd also love to see the terraforming victory as a possible team-victory, especially, when victory depends on a terraformed-land-percentage.

Greetz, Hived!

I agree that terraforming victory is too easy to achieve without any sagnificant malus.

How's this for the anchor grass texture?

This works fine. Easy to distinguish.

I agree that terraforming victory is too easy to achieve without any sagnificant malus.

We're all agreed on this. The issue is designing the alternative.

@ deliverator, please upload the art and terraininfo file for the new anchor grass so I can include it into 1.6.4 today.

@ others, I have implemented the new victory condition as described above (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8605381&postcount=82). The next step is to playtest it.

@ deliverator, please upload the art and terraininfo file for the new anchor grass so I can include it into 1.6.4 today.

Will do - I just need to make the grids version and fix the grids on rock, mesa, etc.

I would probably alert the player to an AI pursuing this, by giving a popup when the first player reaches 1%. I have had problems in the past where an AI pursues this victory, and the first time player suddenly and unexpectedly loses, without even knowing they were in danger.

What do you think?
Yeah, alerting is not bad... although each player should have his own "spies" on looking, who's winning. I'd alert at 1%, 2%, 2.5% and of course 3% *lol* :D

You could also think of new mali vs. "arrakis-spice"-factions, depending on this percentage: 1% = -2; 2% = -4, 2.5% = -6 or something... on the other hand, the reservoirs of liet might work this also out... although I am not sure, if this victory can also be achieved without liets reservoirs...?! Maybe it depends on how many factions try to get a terraforming victory... mostly not sooo much ;)
...but as already said above, maybe the "new terrain" should not come from all: wells, catch basins and liets reservoir... or only "anchor-grassland" appears from all the named. But to be further terraformed into grassland, liets reservoir is required.
If that's too hard, you can count "anchor-grassland" as "half" or "quarter"-terraformed tiles. What means: two (or four) anchor-tiles count as one grassland-tile...

But first of all, as David said, new playtesting is required ;)

Just waiting for 1.6.4 :)

Greetz, Hived!

I don't know if it has been mentioned (read only first page) but the Fremen never intended to drive the worms and spice into extinction. They'd only terraform part of Arrakis and leave the rest to the worms and spice (whose exact relationship I have forgotten), perhaps 50-50 or so. Makes sense considering that they are pretty much spice junkies and the withdrawal is lethal.

I don't really think they thought much about it, the extinction of worms that is. The whole terraforming agenda was to take 50-60 generations. The Fremen depended on water to survive. What they wanted was a world where they didn't have to seal up their caves to keep moisture from escaping and could walk freely outdoors without a stillsuit. Spice was a part of their diet, but it wasn't as valuable to them as to everyone else. They mostly used it as bribes to the spacing guild to hide their terraforming projects.

I'll have to read the novels again just to make sure. But iirc Liet-Kynes (or whatever the name was) specifically planned on not driving the worms into extinction. Of course, whoever takes charge after his death might have different ideas. But then again, Fremen have learned to coexist with the worms and afaik Shai-Hulud is some kind of a worm god of theirs.

'It has been calculated with precision,' Stilgar whispered. 'We know to within a million decalitres how much we need. When we have it, we shall change the face of Arrakis.'

A hushed whisper of response lifted from the troop: 'Bi-lal kaifa.'

'We will trap the dunes beneath grass plantings,' Stilgar said, his voice growing stronger. 'We will tie the water into the soil with trees and undergrowth.'

'Bi-lal kaifa,' intoned the troop.

'Each year the polar ice retreats,' Stilgar said.

'Bi-lal kaifa,' they chanted.

'We will make a homeword of Arrakis - with melting lenses at the poles, with lakes in the temparate zones, and only the deep desert for the maker and his spice.'

'Bi-lal kaifa.'

'And no man ever again shall want for water. It shall be his for dipping from well or pond or lake or canal. It shall run down through the qanats to feed our plants. It shall be there for any man to take. It shall be his for holding out his hand.'

'Bi-lal kaifa.'

The Fremen never intended to destroy the worms completely; that was Leto II's fault. And they also didn't really know that terraforming would destroy all the spice either - but also didn't much care.

I don't know if it has been mentioned (read only first page) but the Fremen never intended to drive the worms and spice into extinction. They'd only terraform part of Arrakis and leave the rest to the worms and spice (whose exact relationship I have forgotten), perhaps 50-50 or so. Makes sense considering that they are pretty much spice junkies and the withdrawal is lethal.

In the mod as in the books, the fact that terraforming drives back the worms and therefore the spice is a side-effect of the terraforming, not the aim.

In 1.6.4 david has changed the terraforming victory target to 3% of all tiles terraformed, so you only have to terraform a percentage of the planet to win this way.

Since people have found the 3% currently too hard to reach, can I suggest again the possibility of having 3-range fresh water on the Reservoir?

Since people have found the 3% currently too hard to reach, can I suggest again the possibility of having 3-range fresh water on the Reservoir?

The 2-range is done as a hack, and it is not easily extensible to 3-range. There is an invisible feature which gives fresh water in all adjacent plots. To get 2-range, I place four of these invisible features one plot N,S,E,W of the city. If you draw it out, you will see this exactly covers the BFC. When the reservoir is destroyed, these four features are also destroyed. There is a bug here, if there is another fresh water source on one of these four plots, it would be destroyed. It is unlikely anybody playing the game will realize, but it is not an ideal solution.

I did not draw out 3-range, but it would require managing like 8-10 of these invisible features, and this bug would be much more likely to happen. So it would require implementing some much cleaner solution. It is listed in the issues sheet, but it is not among my top priorities.

On the other hand, I do plan to take Slvynn's suggestion of changing the "3% of total area" to "10% of terraform-able area". For mapscripts with low land percentage or high mesa percentage, this will make the victory more achievable. I am going to lock down 1.7 probably tomorrow, and this change may or may not make it.

The 2-range is done as a hack, and it is not easily extensible to 3-range. There is an invisible feature which gives fresh water in all adjacent plots. To get 2-range, I place four of these invisible features one plot N,S,E,W of the city.

Ok, I didn't realize this. Thanks for explaining.

If there is another fresh water source on one of these four plots
Does this mean something like groundwater, which only provides fresh water with an improvement? Or only fresh water from a lake/oasis - which should be destroyed if the reservoir gets destroyed anyway?
What other fresh water sources are there?

If it doesn't destroy groundwater water supply, then I don't see what the problem is.

Please see attached Excel sheet to make sure I'm understanding this right, and for a couple of ways to get 3-range. You could get *most* of 3-range by still placing only 4 fresh water resources, so equal chance of bugs to now: place one 2N, 2E, 2S and 2W of the city. And you could get all of it by placing 8.

On the other hand, I do plan to take Slvynn's suggestion of changing the "3% of total area" to "10% of terraform-able area".

Ok, this seems worth trying. Just keep the old code in case we revert :-)

What other fresh water sources are there?

The well is currently the only one. If you have a well N of a city with a reservoir, and the reservoir is destroyed, then the fresh water N of the city disappears. It should not. Nobody has reported this bug yet, but I do not want to extend this hack implementation to 3-range. The chances of the bug being noticed are much larger.

How does the fresh water with groundwater work? You have an invisible resource that provides fresh water *with well improvement*?

Or you have an invisible resource that is created when you build a well improvement?

I ask because groundwater *isn't* like an oasis; it doesn't provide fresh water until the improvement is built on it.

In either case, the groundwater-freshwater (which requires an improvement) seems like a different resource to the freshwater from a reservoir, which doesn't. Is it possible when the reservoir is destroyed that to make it destroy only the latter, and nor the former?

Again though, this is not a high priority issue for me; if you don't think its technically feasible, or only is with considerable work, I'm happy to leave it as a "maybe in future" issue low on the to-do list.

How does the fresh water with groundwater work?

When a well improvement is built, the invisible feature is added. When a well improvement is destroyed or another non-well improvement is built, the invisible feature is removed. When a reservoir is built, four invisible features are added. When a city is destroyed or the civ stops following the paradise civic, the reservoir is destroyed and the four invisible features are removed. The problem is that there may have been effectively *two* invisible features there, one from the reservoir and one from the well, but the game can only store one, so it is removed.

So, the easy fix in some sense would just to be have the well improvement be destroyed at the same time as the fresh water feature is destroyed (when the reservoir is destryed). That way, it gets rebuilt, and a new fresh water feature is created.

So, the easy fix in some sense would just to be have the well improvement be destroyed at the same time as the fresh water feature is destroyed (when the reservoir is destryed). That way, it gets rebuilt, and a new fresh water feature is created.

Sorry, what? If I stop following the paradise civic, then all the wells which happen to be 1 plot N,S,E,W of the cities with reservoirs are destroyed?

Think of it as the water from the reservoir pouring out and destroying infrastructure :-)

I didn't say it was a great solution; just the easiest.

The next easiest would surely be to add a check for a well improvement on the tile before removing the water resource. This is all done in python I assume.

The next easiest would surely be to add a check for a well improvement on the tile before removing the water resource.

That is possible, but managing 4 or 8 separate invisible features is still a hack.

That is possible, but managing 4 or 8 separate invisible features is still a hack.

Yes, but so what?
I thought your suggestion was that this was inevitable.

Yes, but so what?
I thought your suggestion was that this was inevitable.

What I would like to do is implement something in the sdk which actually has a radius. Then there will be only one object to manage.

What I would like to do is implement something in the sdk which actually has a radius. Then there will be only one object to manage.

Ok, understood. So, your preference is leave it for now, and add reconfiguring to a radius (that could allow for radius 3) as a low priority to-do list item.

This seems reasonable, if you think at adding an "if not well, then remove fresh water feature" step would be time-consuming or buggy.