We have discussed a little in the civ traits thread about the special ability of the bene gesserit civ. Ahriman has suggested a super spy with some additional missions, such as decreasing cultural control in a few ways.

The BG civ should have a new superspecialist type Reverend Mother (RM). I am inspired by FFH Grigori heroes, mixed with Great General, mixed with some spy abilities. It would require a small sub-economy including Little Makers to build RMs.

In the main books, RMs are respected, have combat abilities, the Voice, and prescience. The key thing I am thinking of is that a stack with an RM should have special abilities, such as bonus first strikes from prescience. In addition units which are stacked with RMs for a long time may gain experience and possibly access to special promotions. So RMs would not just stay in cities, they would join stacks as well. As usual getting the AI to understand this will probably be hard.

Perhaps RMs by themselves would have access to certain spy type missions. We discussed briefly in the civ traits thread about super spies. Today there is no opportunity to limit certain missions to certain units, so a unit can access all of the missions or none of them. To distinguish RMs from regular spies, we should either build a different mechanism or enhance the super spies code with a mechanism to limit missions.

We can also build new abillities around "fake buildings" as pointed out by Ahriman. This is one mechanism used by FFH spells, along with "fake promotions" on units.

Thoughts, comments, suggestions?

I think with both the Spacing Guild and Bene Gesserit we have the problem that it is unlikely that they would try to take over Arrakis by force. They achieve what they want through political engineering and manipulation of other groups.

I like the idea that RMs can be kept in a city and give that city some benefit while they are there - like the Inspiration spell in FFH2, or go out into the field on espionage missions.

I think RMs should be powerful and therefore there should probably be a cap on the number you can have at one time.

One could argue that when playing BG, you aren't actually playing them, but rather some puppet house you are manipulating.

My one problem with Reverend mothers being very separate from everything else is that the Priest specialist (and great priests) are Truth Sayers - who are by definition Reverend Mothers.

Maybe there is some way to build a mechanic around Truth Sayer specialists? Bonuses to this specialist type? Super-wonders created by Great Truth Sayers (a la FFH Altars)?

I wonder also if there is some way to get across the somewhat Grigori-like attitude towards religion; the BGs don't *believe* in the religions they spread, they just use them as tools (opiate of the masses and all that).

Agnostic a la FFH doesn't fit, because the BG are definitely very active in spreading religion around. Maybe the BGs should just prefer more religions, rather a single religion everywhere?

I also don't really think RM's should be combat units. It would just feel wrong for a RM (or a legion of RMs??!?) to be marchnig around the map taking out enemy battalions.

My one problem with Reverend mothers being very separate from everything else is that the Priest specialist (and great priests) are Truth Sayers - who are by definition Reverend Mothers.

Well, I want a UU for the BG, and it may be reasonable to consider TS to be a separate thing from RM. (Could I possibly fit any more abbreviations into that sentence?) It may be possible to have civ-specific actions for GP; I doubt it, but even if that was possible I think they should be different units.

I also don't really think RM's should be combat units. It would just feel wrong for a RM (or a legion of RMs??!?) to be marchnig around the map taking out enemy battalions.

I agree, I was thinking of them as a Great General more than a standalone combat unit. You attach a GG to a unit or stack and the unit gets benefits. The point is that they teach special skills to the combat troops, not so much that they fight directly. I was not thinking of the exact GG mechanic, since the GG can never leave its main unit. But that may be as close as we can get mechanics-wise.

It may be enough just to have them able to give units combat promotions such as First Strike somehow. That feels more appropriate than Great General to me. Teaching them the wierding way. Are there any more interesting promotions around or that we can think up?

You attach a GG to a unit or stack and the unit gets benefits.

I like this. The FFH mechanic works well here; attach the GG for +1 strength and +1 xp per combat.

I am not sure if this is implementable, but here is a power that would be cool to play with: invisibility and feints, based on prescience. Suppose there was a UB for the civ, which enabled you to create a fake stack. The stack has no actual attack ability, but it looks real to the other players and AI. So the other players will defend against it. If it appears near the border, you would treat it as an attack and build up against it. But this is a feint, the units cannot actually do anything. You are tricking the other player into sending a defensive stack over *here*, instead of over *there* where the actual attack is coming. The rationalization is that the RMs are directing the units using prescience so the defense may be a little off balance.

The reverse of this is also true, where it would be cool to have a stack made invisible. So you send your feint in one direction, and your actual invisible attack stack another direction.

There are two parts to this, and as I said it may not be implementable at all. The first part is having the AI decide a good location for a "feint stack" and to pick out a stack which should be invisible. The second part is the actual game mechanics for creating a fake stack and an invisible stack. I suspect it may take cloning of units, especially to make the feint units. Invisibility may be possible with a promotion.

Sometimes when I have a way-out idea like this, it turns out some other mod already has it. Any reactions or leads?

It's definitely a cool idea. But I wonder whether it might be more appropriate for the Ordos who are always described as insidious and sneaky. In fact, in Emperor, one of the Ix units was a projector tank that did pretty much what you describe, allows you to create a fake army of units.

"When you target another unit with the projector, you will create a holographic replica of that unit. It is under your control, but has no offensive ability and can be revealed by shooting at it. After a time, the replica will blink out of existence."

I think it would its a bit of leap to get from prescience to having a fake army, but it's a cool idea for one of the other factions maybe.

I think FFH2 has a couple of units which might do something similar but not exactly the same - Divided Soul and/or Alkazan the Assassin who produces an illusion of himself.

fake army?

hummm...this will require a special one....a unit that will be displayed with the power of 40, but will be acctually as power 1 :)

I doubt there is really any good way of making this fool the human player, and the AI that controls such an army is unlikely to feint with it; they'll probably just put it in their main Stack of Doom.

And does the human player really need any further means to exploit weak AI?

For prescience, how about just a recon mission? They can see where the enemy units are, and without roads, calculate their own combat movement much better.
This seems to incorporate most of the strategic military gains of prescience.

For prescience, how about just a recon mission?

That is certainly more implementable. Both spacer guild and bene gesserit could have this. Perhaps a UU which is implemented as an air unit with only recon missions, but called something like "Spice Vision".

Or just give the Guild orbital satellites with a recon mission.

Remember that in the book the Fremen are paying off the guild to NOT take survey pictures of their lands from the satellites.

Agree about satellites for the spacer guild. But that's for another thread someday.

I tried modifying an air unit to do something like a "Spice Vision". I can get the xml mostly the way I want it. It shows up as a unit in the city and it has a rebase button, neither of which is quite what I want. The animation would have to be redone; I guess idle should be invisible, and the patrol mission could create some kind of weird glow effect in the target square instead of ships flying by. There doesn't appear to be any way to control the size of the area revealed, it is an 11x11 square, but that may be OK.

The problem is that the AI doesn't seem to use it. I gave myself one of these units at turn 1 and then autoplayed a few turns. I came back and none of the map was explored and the unit was sleeping. I was hoping that the AI would send the unit on recon missions if there was nothing else useful for it to do, but apparently not. I could try setting up a more advanced experiment where the AI is at war, maybe it would recon areas it is planning to attack.

I guess next I will see what can be done with Great General variants. At least an auto first strike for the stack and faster experience seem reasonable.

I think its relatively unimportant that the AI doesn't use it, because the AI has omniscience anyway IIRC. They don't really alter their behavior based on things they can or can't see, and they never used recon mission to explore the map (but they're pretty good map explorers anyway).

I think its relatively unimportant that the AI doesn't use it [recon], because the AI has omniscience anyway IIRC.

Is that true? In game AI design, omniscience is considered a serious "cheat". I don't know one way or the other about civ; if so then the area recon seems like a good ability even if it is player only. I guess it would have to be an action button on a RM unit rather than being built out of an air unit. I will have to learn how to make that large selection area and get a tile selection from the user, and then un-fog the local neighborhood. That may be a large project.

New day, new mechanics ideas. Now I am thinking RM should be a regular unit which has a national cap and can be built if you have access to the Little Maker bonus. (We need to do *something* with those whale units out there.)

One easy promotion would be "Sentry II", which gives a two plot visibility bonus. Especially used by an invisible spy unit, this would be pretty valuable to see what the enemy is doing.

In the books there are several mentions of "blank spots" in prescience. I would love to do something like this where a RM can be surrounded by a local "fog of war" which prevents you from seeing what units are in the stack. It is less than invisibility, since you know the blank spot is there. Perhaps if I intercept mouse-over and combat odds on stacks with RM, I can get a similar effect.

I would also like to do something where all the units in a stack with a RM get a super first strike, which still takes effect even when the defender has "immune to first strikes". This is how Jessica bested Stilgar, and it relates to prescience.

If I get a list of prescience related special effects, the unit starts to look like an FFH wizard. Then the challenge will be to have the AI use it effectively.

Lots of ideas to think about and see what can be implemented. Any additional suggestions for cool RM related mechanics?

Wasn't there some talk recently here about a Deviator unit that switches the allegiance of a unit? Instead of nerve gas the RM unit would use it's voice.

Wasn't there some talk recently here about a Deviator unit that switches the allegiance of a unit? Instead of nerve gas the RM unit would use it's voice.

Switching allegiances got mixed reviews. But something like a stun effect may fit the Voice. ""Don't move!"" Only on one unit, not on a stack.

Switching allegiances got mixed reviews. But something like a stun effect may fit the Voice. ""Don't move!"" Only on one unit, not on a stack.

Sounds good. If we use it as the rm attack it should be easy to implement, even for the ai.

I think its relatively unimportant that the AI doesn't use it, because the AI has omniscience anyway IIRC.AFAIK, not true. They just have a larger sight radius (IIRC, 1 or 2 squares more than humans, but then the AI has no memory, so it effectively simulates remembering the immediate surroundings). And I distinctly remember being annoyed by hordes of recon air ships in BtS.

Cheers, LT.

I guess it would have to be an action button on a RM unit rather than being built out of an air unit.


I know there were (still are?) spells in FFH and the Warhammer mod on normal land units that duplicate the effect of recon missions.

Sentry promotions and just regular first strikes (how many immune to first strike unit are there anyway?) also do a good job of implementing this.

Only on one unit, not on a stack.

The problem is this is that the AI often freezes a whole stack if even one unit in it gets stunned, because its combat mechanics tend to encourage stack of doom behavior.


And I distinctly remember being annoyed by hordes of recon air ships in BtS.

The fact that the AI performs recon run actions doesn't necessarily means it gains anything from doing so.
I may be wrong and I have no particular evidence for this, but I've never noticed the AI changing behavior based on things it can or can't see.

The easiest way to make spell AI work (and I think the way the FFH AIs do it?) is to give each spell a priority rating based on power and effect, and then have the unit check which spells it can cast that have legitimate targets each turn (subject to a few restrictions) and cast the one with the highest value.

For example; enchant blade is a good spell that adds a permanent stack buff to every melee unit in the stack, but because its a permanent effect it should have a low AI rating because you want it cast in peacetime.
Loyalty is a weak permanent buff spell, so it should have a very low AI priority.
In contrast, pillar of flame is a high power combat spell that damages a stack in an adjacent tile, so has a high AI rating.
Summoning spells like fireball are good so have a medium priority, but should check first whether or not there are any enemy units within 2 tiles.
That way, the mage has access to all 4 spells, it will cast pillar of fire if there are are enemies in an adjacent tile over all others. If not, but there are enemies within 2 tiles, it will cast Fireball. If not, but there are melee units in its tile without enchanted blade already, it will cast Enchanted blade.
Otherwise, it will cast loyalty.

The easiest way to make spell AI work (and I think the way the FFH AIs do it?) is to give each spell a priority rating based on power and effect, and then have the unit check which spells it can cast that have legitimate targets each turn (subject to a few restrictions) and cast the one with the highest value.

To me, choosing among combat spells is not the hard part. If one unit has a possible role in buffing cities and spying and also standard attacks, how does the AI decide how many to build, and where to send them? For example, an attack stack has a wizard, but a nearby friendly city has become unhappy. Divert the wizard from the attack to cast inspire?

This problem statement may include its own solution. Perhaps we need several different RM type units, one for attacks, one for spying, one for city buffing.

I don't think the AI is ever intelligently able to move its mages around based on what its spells can do; I don't think the FFH AI really does it. I don't think thats a realistic AI hope either; the civ AI just isn't that great at managing its units.

About the best you can hope to do is to give the wizards medic AI so that they accompany stacks around and then cast whatever spells are appropriate.

Adding spells is too much work imho. Why don't we make it rm unit's regular attack? AI would know how to use it and always choose the best defender as a target, which is pretty useful.

This isn't quite to the top of my to-do list, but close. My current design for the Reverend Mother unit is:

* National unit, limit 5
* Relatively low strength (2?), move 2, default AI UNITAI_COUNTER which should force it to travel in attack stacks
* Requires Little Maker resource, some mid-game tech like Water Of Life
* Flag bRivalTerritory, which allows exploring rival territory
* Each turn, when stacked with friendly units, small chance that one unit will get a free promotion of Combat N+1, or Drill N+1. If it already had say Combat 3, it would get Combat 4 or Drill 1. This represents training the unit in the Weirding Way.
* New promotion Prescience, like "Sentry 2", giving an additional +1 visibility range beyond Sentry. This is not available for any other unit, but the RM starts with it. This promotion does not operate when in territory owned by Spacer Guild.

This last point seems somewhat odd. I really want to get at the effect where one prescient person may see a "blind spot" around another one. I cannot find any way to produce "fog of war" around a unit; that was my first choice. My second choice was to make the prescience promotion not work when nearby to other units which also use spice; that is possible, but performing that search may be time consuming in python. So my third choice is fast to evaluate; any time inside the territory of another spice-using civ, the promotion does not work. This may be either too rare or overly abstract, but I cannot think of anything better.

Please comment.

* Each turn, when stacked with friendly units, small chance that one unit will get a free promotion of Combat N+1, or Drill N+1. If it already had say Combat 3, it would get Combat 4 or Drill 1. This represents training the unit in the Weirding Way.

Why not give First Strikes promotions?

Drill is the name of the promotion that gives first strikes.

Ah, stupid me.

My current design for the Reverend Mother unit is:

* National unit, limit 5
* Relatively low strength (2?), move 2, default AI UNITAI_COUNTER which should force it to travel in attack stacks
* Requires Little Maker resource, some mid-game tech like Water Of Life
* Flag bRivalTerritory, which allows exploring rival territory
* Each turn, when stacked with friendly units, small chance that one unit will get a free promotion of Combat N+1, or Drill N+1. If it already had say Combat 3, it would get Combat 4 or Drill 1. This represents training the unit in the Weirding Way.
* New promotion Prescience, like "Sentry 2", giving an additional +1 visibility range beyond Sentry. This is not available for any other unit, but the RM starts with it. This promotion does not operate when in territory owned by Spacer Guild.

Implemented in 1.3.6 except for "not operating in SG territory", I decided not to bother. Plus, check out the screenshot (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=221341&d=1247910023) of the unit by Chuggi, reskin by Lord Tirian and Deliverator!

Here's a screenshot of the 1.3.6 Reverend Mother in game. She looks great thanks to Lord Tirian's reskinning, but I think we can find some better animations for her in time.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=221441&stc=1&d=1247956930

Lighting up this thread again. In July I added the Reverend Mother unit as described two posts back. It has a training ability and a long range sentry ability. Due to some changes and then some bugs, nobody has built a lot of them and there hasn't been much feedback.

Recently there was a comment that Reverend Mothers should not have prescience, but they should have something related to the Voice ability from the books. It has been suggested many times that the Bene Gesserit in general should have diplomacy abilities, the ability to manipulate others behind the scenes. This could possibly be spy missions based on the existing Super Spies code that DW has inherited through RevDCM. I have now spent a few hours looking through the SS code and I have some idea about how it works, so I may be able to add things. I have been adding UU and UB for all the other civs, but I haven't been able to find any good ideas for Bene Gesserit.

So, let's brainstorm about how to make Bene Gesserit more interesting. Hopefully we will come up with ideas which I can implement.

Possible unit names: Sayyadina, Reverend Mother, Initiate, Truthsayer, Kwisatz Haderach.

The BG have a breeding program which has generated a number of "almost" KH. Perhaps this can be represented by a multi-stage project or private tech tree. As you progress in these stages, you can train better KH units, or unlock promotions which can go onto your existing KH. I'm not sure what the increasing powers of the KH might be.

Today spies can affect religion, civics and many other things, but not diplomacy. Perhaps the BG can have a spy mission carried out in another civ's city which gives a +4 permanent diplomatic reaction from that civ to BG. This would be like signing some kind of treaty, or more likely some behind the scenes exertion of Voice.

Another spy mission might show you a picklist of all the other civs, you select one, and the mission gives the target a permanent -4 diplomatic penalty against that civ. For example, you have a spy in a Corrino city, you execute this mission, and you pick Atreides. This would cause the Atreides ambassador in that city to do something embarrassing, or create the appearance that he did. Corrino would get a -4 change in reaction to Atreides. You could use this to soften up Atreides to stop cooperating with Corrino.

In the diplomacy screen, there are often suggestions you can make such as "stop trading with X", or "Declare war on X", or "Make peace with X". When I play, these options are all usually greyed out because I don't spend too much time making friends. But, maybe somehow we can give the BG a bonus here. One obvious way is to just give BG a permanent +4 diplomacy with everybody. But I'd rather make the player work for it somehow. There are spy missions that give +8 unhappiness which wears off over 8 turns. Maybe a spy mission could give a +8 diplomatic bonus which wears off over 8 turns, or gets used up after one action in the diplomacy menu.

The Super Spies code has a promotion line "Escape Artist" which allows the spy to escape death on failure. This can be highly useful. Also, normally a spy returns to your capitol upon success. Perhaps another promotion or BG skill would be to stay in the city after carrying out the action, succeed or fail. This seems more like a diplomat; a plan might have failed, but the diplomat is not forced to leave.

Any reactions?

i really like all of the above :D

I like ideas, though i want to warn again about use of mechanics that fall our normal plane of UU/UR/UB differencies.
This will be cool one, but:
Such abilities should not be aviable 1 time at game per each one. Perhaps they should replace Trait and give special options in diplomacy.
There is no such big power of RM in dune lore. Also more than 1 time using such abilities - its just a game breaker. There should not be "sure" victories. So those things are awesome, but only 1 time per game.

I also have ideas about Breed - by sacrificing Riverend mother and hight exp unit you may be able to produce on same unit with number of prootions ecual to lowest number of promotions among their parents (Mahdi Zealot have 4 promotions and RM have 3 that will create new Mahdi Zealot with 3 promotions and 0 xp) - will reset his expirience counter. So if you work hard you able to produce really crazy promoted units.
That breed promotion can grow with time by adding more promotions to RM. Better experienced RM - better is their breed. Lets say after certain tech palace will giv +1 new promotion to RM. That mean final produced unit will have +1 promotion. And so forth. I think best intepritation of KH will be unit that with 10xp have 15 promotions.

We have still limitations of game called Civ4. Also limitatious of book lore.

Yeah, the breeding program is one part of the main theme of the BG.
According to this, I personally prefer the idea of David: Give them one world unit, with different upgrades (such as "pre-KH, semi-KH, nearly-KH and finally THE KH!).

Maybe you could implement their search for "good gene-material" by a "Kwiz-counter".
You could make them "collect" Experience points from highly promoted enemy/allied/own? units. This could happen as follows:
RM is "spy-unit" and has to share a tile with the High-XP-unit. By pressing the "steal gene-material-button" the RM gives all XP of that unit in the "Kwiz-counter". RM is used up, doing this (to prevent players from always taking the same unit, the units XP can be reduced and one or two random promotions taken away) depending.

To make it more "searchy", you can let her only steal XP-5 (or 8, 10... x) points, so units with 5 or less xp aren't interesting for the BG. You then could also "reset" enemy XP down to five (and maybe kill promos)... Also you could give the RM a success-rate depending on the RM-level and the units level, so really high units are kind of safer.

Hard to code, I suppose ;)

My idea about the voice is still, to use them vs. regular units, such as Harkonnen-thopter pilots :D
Give them a "break" until next turn (or even longer, depends on RM-exp.) or even damage/kill/convert enemy units could be thought of. As said in the other thread, I do not suppose to voice a whole army, but every army has its leaders... those can be voiced :) ... at night after taking their semen ;) (see above) and there still can be a success-rate on such missions. Promotions such as "immune vs. voice" or "high voice-resistance" let us think of Paul in the beginning or Alia in the end of the film.

Greetz Hived!

I think multi-breeding is more coorect.

1 World unit is cool but what if you lose it? Makeing to powerfull - is not good, to limited -too, how you'll improve it? Stealthy spy unit stealing promotions? - it cant be cvombat then. further more it breaks steal/spy mechanics and lore. There is no such thing as stealth unit stealing abilities in books.
But there are mothers that breed with different people, producing better results. There is no 1. There are multiple lines, and rules of breeding.

They never got their program woked completely, best result was Leto II who was pre-born , abomination, and then via inner struggle brought him self to God state.

sorry... i'm not that firm with civ-terms.
World unit should mean a "National Unit" where only one is allowed. Maybe you could also say: pre-KH: 10 allowed, semi-KH 5, "nearly-KH" 3, THE KH 1.
And you're right, they led their program on different lines... but they also were sure, that only ONE KH will appear.
Just because they didn't achieve their aims in the film, that doesn't restrict the options in this mod ;)
I also didn't mean stealthy spy units, but "visible" ones. I just wanted to figure out, that they can enter hostile territories and share tiles with enemy-units (such as missionaries).
Maybe they can also be regular units, that steal the promos when "attacking"... but so they can use it only vs. hostile units... that doesn't seem to me breeding program-like.

I also like the actual ability of giving units on same tile XP... although I'd prefer "direct-teaching", so giving the knowledge to only ONE unit and not a whole stack.

What about the voice?

Slvynn also proposed, to make voice/prescience as traits... here's the link to the discussion.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=326273&page=8

What do you think?

Greetz, Hived!

Voice is good as trai imo that allow 1 time (aka Trust) options to influence politics + charm (from FFH) spell that deny few adjacent units to aatack

Breeding is best baaned when it hard, and KH is just one crazy unit which get 20 promotions at level 4
perhaps at this term one should be able to get a KH promotion.

The idea of literally breeding a unit from existing ones is certainly something I had not thought of! Raising of children is a little hard in Civ games because of the variable number of years in a game turn. In vanilla, early turns span a hundred years, and late turns span 1 year. So say 15 years to raise a child is 1/6 of a turn at the beginning or 15 turns at the end. Of course, we have to overlook some things to have a GP or a civ leader last hundreds of turns anyway. In DW, each turn is one year; we could revisit that choice but it seems less like something which spans generations.

If we had a KH type unit, we could build it from a tech tree. This forces the player to put something into it, beakers in this case. These could represent different branches of the potential KH family tree; cousins, for example, born at slightly different times in the past. Rather than upgrading one unit, you could have one new, stronger unit appear, with no opportunity of building another. If you lose the unit, you have nothing until you achieve the next tech level in the breeding program.

I like the idea of "forcing success" in the diplomacy screen, but I think of the Voice as something that happens in person rather than by radio or however LH conduct diplomacy. I also like the idea of a mission to break up other peoples' alliances, by giving a -4 between two other civs. I'll see if I can implement a Super Spy mission to give me, or some third party, a diplomatic modifier. If it works, we can see how interesting it is to play. A big bonus which lasts 1 turn can be equivalent to a "forced success" in the diplomacy screen.

Just to note - long term diplo penalty for repeatable action is way too strong.
That need to be tuned down alot to point where it will be slight, but good bonus, in order to preserve game balance.

Just to note - long term diplo penalty for repeatable action is way too strong.
That need to be tuned down alot to point where it will be slight, but good bonus, in order to preserve game balance.

The spy missions like poison water give 8 unhappiness which wears off at one per turn. I could make the diplomacy benefit work like that. That is more complicated because I have to add a delay counter and make sure it counts down. Given this mechanic, as a player, I would plant three spies in three cities of the enemy and pop this mission three times all in the same turn, to get a pretty big bonus for diplomacy the same turn. I am pretty sure that the AI would not figure this out.

Perhaps we should discuss this a little more to find something which is fun, *and* the AI can use it, *and* I can figure out how to implement it.

Perhaps we should discuss this a little more to find something which is fun, *and* the AI can use it, *and* I can figure out how to implement it.

What about a permanent +1diplo for each witch?! You have to "sacrifice" her (leave her as steady advisor), to get this bonus. Maximum bonus is +4 (or more, as you like).

Pro:
Easier to implement (no counter)
not so easy "cheatable"
AI should know, how to use... although there's no use vs. the human player.

Contra:
That's advisory, not voice ;)
(Maybe) not possible to "force" success, as the diplo-difference doesn't improve that much.
Not clear how to use to shatter an enemy alliance.

Go on... the discussion just starts!

Greetz, Hived!

Some interesting ideas here.

Perhaps the BG can have a spy mission carried out in another civ's city which gives a +4 permanent diplomatic reaction

I would tend to have a +1 mission, rather than a +4, and have it be useable repeatedly, with a maximum total modifier from that effect.
Similarly, -1 rather than -4.
Obviously, the difficulty is in getting the AI to use this and other espionage missions.
Have your explorations led to you learning anything about the espionage AI?

One obvious way is to just give BG a permanent +4 diplomacy with everybody
In terms of flavor, I worry about overlap between Likeable Atreides (like Duke Leto), and the Bene Gesserit. Nobody really likes or trusts the Bene Gesserit, they're just good at using blackmail to get things done. Would there be a way to make it easier for the BGs to get deals, *without* making them generally more likable?

Perhaps another promotion or BG skill would be to stay in the city after carrying out the action, succeed or fail.

Maybe.... but this risks messing up other espionage balance. Part of the balancing factor for espionage is having to build multiple spies if you want to use thme a lot. I don't think it would be good to be able to carry out all the espionage you wanted with just 2 infiltrators.
But this might be a good idea, since the AI doesn't do intercontinental spy transport well, which is somethnig else we should consider before making factions too dependent on espionage.
Didn't you just make suspensor transport though available to spies - was that all spies? Do we know if it actually works in terms of the AI using them, or do we have a Fremen problem, where the units could cross desert, but the AI doesn't know that?

The spy mission that plants your culture in enemy cities will be very BG-appropriate.

by sacrificing Riverend mother and hight exp unit you
Why should you have to sacrifice a Rev Mother?

I could see RMs being attached to units though, like FFH great generals, for a first strike bonus and +1 xp per combat.

I would prefer to keep any breeding program type things strictly outside the engine.
I don't want them to be trying to move units around collecting genetic material from other factions. that sounds kinda lame and impossible for the AI.

... at night after taking their semen
Oh please god no....


The spy missions like poison water give 8 unhappiness which wears off at one per turn. I could make the diplomacy benefit work like that

This seems reasonable, but a permanent +1
Alternative; how about the mission sacrifices the unit for a permanent +1 diplomacy modifier (or -1 diplomacy modifier)?
So what you are doing is building a unit that is permanently imbedded as an advisor/ambassador with the other faction?

So the diplomacy modifier description is "We have Bene Gesserit advisors manipulating this faction". And the more witches you have advising them, the larger is the diplomacy modifier. With some cap.

Thoughts:

Have several unique Bene Gesserit UUs, each with a single active ability (and maybe a minor passive ability), and a unique AI designed for that ability.

Unit names:
Sisterhood Initiate, Reverend Mother, Truthsayer, Kwizatch Haderach

Sisterhood Initiate. Requires Faith tech. Requires Sisterhood Covenant resource.
Creates a FFH-wall of stone-type building that gives +6 espionage points.
National limit 5.
Cheap.
Basically, this lets you get a big head start on the espionage race.
[Problem; this would probably work better with just an actual building.
Missionaria Protectiva building, gives +1 culture +4 espionage points, requires Faith tech.]

Reverend Mother. Requires water of life tech. Requires Sisterhood Covenant resource.
As current; slowly trains units in the stack. Starts with sentry 1, sentry 2. (OR can spot invisible units: this would actually work well here, I think its reasonable for Bene Gesserit to be able to spot and kill incoming spies).
National limit 3.

Truthsayer. Requires Mind Training tech and Water of Life tech. Requires BG faction.
Espionage unit, sacrifices self in enemy city to gain permanent +1 diplomacy modifier with that faction.
National limit 1.

Kwizatz Haderach. Requires Kwizatz Haderach tech. Requires BG faction.
World unit, limit 1.
Single super-unit.
Maybe strength 20 or so, but with a TON of first strikes (like 4-5), sentry 1, sentry 2, can spot invisible.

I prefer the term Acolyte to Initiate. I'm pretty sure that's the name given to BG trainees.

I was thinking of a Truthsayer unit too. It would nice if she had some more unique powers or than just the permanent diplomatic bonus. She should be uber-counter-espionage since she can force almost anyone to tell the truth!

I like the idea of a Kwizatz Haderach super unit, but I think that it should not be something only the BG can get. Perhaps other civs can have a different path to it.

We are thinking along similar lines (for once :-)).

I propose:

Weirding Instructor (uses current Qizarate advocate artwork): uses today's RM training ability but not prescience or ability to enter enemy borders. Keep it stacked with any SOD and the stack becomes even doomier.

Reverend Mother: becomes a UU spy. Probably not today, but in the next week or so, I will experiment with these ideas for diplo missions for spies. I was also thinking that the idea of sacrificing a unit for permanent +1 diplo is just like the Great Merchant, only with diplomacy instead of gold at the end.

Truthsayer: UU of Great Prophet. This idea I am less certain about. I assume you can make a UU of a GP. I would add some kind of spy defense. Secondary importance, but we should do something with this very thematic name.

Kwisatz Haderach tech tree: four new techs called KH I,II,III,IV. Each tech grants a free unit, so there are four new units called KH I,II,II,IV. (Obviously we can find better names than just I,II,III,IV). The units have increasing levels of power, but cannot be normally built. You only get one, period, end of story. I don't think that giving the unit itself a high attack strength is a good idea; many people have rejected the idea of a single person high attack value unit. But we can relocate the Atreides Heir concept. I like the concept but it can work just as well for KH as AH. Something like:

KH I: +10% strength to all stacked units, 2 plot visibility (today's prescience promo)

KH II: +10% and one first strike to all stacked units, 2 plot visibility

KH III: +25% strength and one first strike, 4 plot visibility

KH IV: +50% strength and two first strikes, grants visibility to entire board (like vanilla satellites tech)

Lets make sure that we keep in mind which techs for which units, that has a large effect on their balance.
In general we want to:
a) Fill out some of the weaker techs
b) Spread these units to particular techs that have BG flavor, like Academies, Water of Life, and Kwizatch Haderach.

We should also be clear with which units are BG-only, and which are URU units from the Sisterhood Covenant resource.

It would nice if she had some more unique powers or than just the permanent diplomatic bonus

Multiple features on a unit are harder to AI code, surely, when we need such a narrow AI. The National limit of 1 is also designed to limit the abuse, especially by a human player.
I would guess that the AI code for Truthsayers should be something like: go to the nearest city of the highest score civ that has not already maxed out on Truthsayers stationed with that civ. So the AI will do that with every newly built Truthsayer.

If you wanted to include espionage, maybe just include a 1-shot espionage point gain +100 EPs when you use the truthsayer ability (and sacrifice it)?


Weirding Instructor (uses current Qizarate advocate artwork): uses today's RM training ability but not prescience or ability to enter enemy borders. Keep it stacked with any SOD and the stack becomes even doomier.

Seems reasonable. I forget, do we still have a Weirding tech? We could put it there, though that is quite late.

Reverend Mother: becomes a UU spy
There are two ways I can see this working.
One is to literally just have RMs as a UU spy that replaces the infiltrator.
The other is to still have normal infiltrator spies for normal espionage missions, and then to have Reverend Mothers as Improved Spies, coming from Water of Life tech, with their specific espionage missions unique to this unit (causing uprising for X turns, shifting influence, adding culture to enemy cities, etc)
I favor the latter. We don't want RMs to come too early, and we don't want RMs to spend their time sabotaging improvements and poisoning water supplies.

Truthsayer: UU of Great Prophet
I dunno. I think the Truthsayer works best with the sacrifice for diplomacy option; thats kinda how this works, the Bene Gesserit's lend out Truthsayers in exchange for influence.
If the Truthsayer is just going to be anti-espionage, I think the "spots invisible units" would be good, so that you can use them to kill enemy spies during wartime.

Kwisatz Haderach tech tree: four new techs called KH I,II,III,IV

I don't really like this. These techs would be very very narrow, and they would make the tech tree messy.

Maybe we should tie them into the existing techs? So these things are triggered by Event from the first Bene Gesserit civ to research Theocracy, Academies, Mind Training and Kwizatz Haderach.

The units have increasing levels of power, but cannot be normally built. You only get one, period, end of story. I don't think that giving the unit itself a high attack strength is a good idea; many people have rejected the idea of a single person high attack value units

Sounds good.

But we can relocate the Atreides Heir concept
Seems plausible, though some of the bonuses may be a little large.


KH IV: +50% strength and two first strikes, grants visibility to entire board (like vanilla satellites tech)

Doesn't satellites just remove the shroud, for unexplored areas?
It doesn't remove fog of war. So it doesn't substitute for things like a 4-plot visibility.
And doesn't the satellites tech in Dunewars still have this effect?
Maybe just make it something like +10 plot visibility.

In general we want to:
a) Fill out some of the weaker techs
b) Spread these units to particular techs that have BG flavor, like Academies, Water of Life, and Kwizatch Haderach.

My concept was that we would put KH I-IV as techs at the extreme lower right corner of the tech tree, grant the KH I tech as a starting tech for BG, and use a high AIWeight to keep BG interested in them. I threw together a screenshot with dummy xml.

We should also be clear with which units are BG-only, and which are URU units from the Sisterhood Covenant resource.

Good point. The BG is very low on UU. So my thought was to get rid of the SC resource and make all of these units purely UU.


The other is to still have normal infiltrator spies for normal espionage missions, and then to have Reverend Mothers as Improved Spies, coming from Water of Life tech, with their specific espionage missions unique to this unit (causing uprising for X turns, shifting influence, adding culture to enemy cities, etc)

That sounds good. Right now there is no way to limit espionage missions to one civ or one unit, so that will have to be the first thing I add.

Doesn't satellites just remove the shroud, for unexplored areas? It doesn't remove fog of war. So it doesn't substitute for things like a 4-plot visibility. And doesn't the satellites tech in Dunewars still have this effect? Maybe just make it something like +10 plot visibility.

You would think that the tech would be satellites, but due to the random historical background of the tech tree, it is currently Aerial Tactics. I fixed that just now. Good point anyway. There is no particular harm in having two ways to achieve map visibility. I can also try 10-plot visibility, but because the game engine has to do operations on "N squared" number of plots, I am a little concerned the turn time may slow down.

EDIT: there isn't any good way to restrict a tech to one civ. A free starting tech is the only way I know. There is a python callback, but it is known to have a huge impact on runtime. Keldath had mentioned a while back about an existing modcomp which does this, but it may be complex to merge. Another possibility is to make it a project. The BG could get a free starting tech which has no particular purpose except to enable a project. I assume a project can have several stages, but I haven't used that much. If you dislike the separate tech tree concept, we can explore projects.

My concept was that we would put KH I-IV as techs at the extreme lower right corner of the tech tree

Human players won't really notice it there. And if the 4 techs are going to require other techs anyway (eg theocracy, academies, mind training, KH) in order to regulate when they come, why require the extra tech? Why not just give the bonus with those techs?

What is the design gain from requiring extra techs?

So my thought was to get rid of the SC resource and make all of these units purely UU.

I would be ok with that. We could interpret the diplomacy bonus mechanic as an alternative way of lending BG advisors lent out to other factions.

There is no particular harm in having two ways to achieve map visibility.
Agreed.

I can also try 10-plot visibility, but because the game engine has to do operations on "N squared" number of plots, I am a little concerned the turn time may slow down
Good point.
Then just leave it at +4; my point was to make sure that the level 4 is not a step down from the level 3 in terms of the visual range, as would happen if the level 3 had +4 and the level 4 had just the terrain reveal effect.

And if the 4 techs are going to require other techs anyway (eg theocracy, academies, mind training, KH) in order to regulate when they come, why require the extra tech?

My concept was to regulate progression along the KH branch by a really high beaker cost. Also, having those techs separate means I do not have to give civ-specific benefits to a tech, or civ-specific AI weights either. It also seems to capture the theme concept of a secret research project which only the BG can work on.

I ninja'd your post with an edit. Projects may be a better approach but I have not used them much.

My concept was to regulate progression along the KH branch by a really high beaker cost.

I dont' like this. I don't think the AI does a good job of considering beaker costs alone, hence why we have a tech tree with requirements. Tech requirements are the easiest to balance way of regulating access.

Also, with really high beaker costs, the player (and AI) would probably be better served by moving along the normal tree, rather than diverting for just one unit, so this shouldn't see much use.

What is the design reason for separating these out from the main tree? I see no benefit. No other faction has to divert beakers outside their normal technological development in order to access their UUs.

Another point; we need a way so that the different level KH bonuses do NOT stack with each other in a single tile.

*edit*
there isn't any good way to restrict a tech to one civ
Well, there are in FFH and Warhammer and others, but that may require sdk changes that aren't worth the effort.
This would seem to support tying them to the existing tree.
Or you could fake it by having them require an invisible tech that the BGs started with, I guess.

Let's explore a project which only the BG can perform. I really like the idea of a separate place for this, rather than having it occur during normal tech progression.

EDIT: there isn't any good way to restrict a tech to one civ.

Perhaps there is... A long long time ago I suggested making minimal use of the Civ Specific Tech Trees (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=275046) modcomp. It is updated to 3.19 and looks really flexible. You can have just one or two unique techs per civ or just have one civ that gets a unique branch. Maybe we have a case for using it now.

I think there could be a few other good uses for this modcomp to get our factions more distinctive.

with really high beaker costs, the player (and AI) would probably be better served by moving along the normal tree, rather than diverting for just one unit, so this shouldn't see much use ... What is the design reason for separating these out from the main tree? I see no benefit. No other faction has to divert beakers outside their normal technological development in order to access their UUs.

That is one strong vote against civ-specific techs. Does anybody else *like* the idea of a project that the BG can invest in separately, instead of just picking up the units as they go along the regular tech tree? If civ-specific techs isn't the right way, is there another way, like projects?

I like Ahrimans version most.
Putting them in the regular tech-tree (or maybe in buildings from the tree) doesn't mess up at all. Deliverators link also looks interesting... but adding such a component (not knowing, if compatible to DW-changes and also having to redefine channels for trees and civs) seems to me too much work, just for the BG-UUs...
of course, when you think of giving several factions "personal ways", such a component is very welcome.

I think the +1 permanent by "sacrifice" (lending advisor) seems decided.
I am still missing the voice :(

Greetz, Hived.

I like the BG Sisterhood Covenant UR

It allows me (and AIs) to produce the Reverend Mother unit without being the BG, as long as it is possible to get sufficiently good relations with them. Throughout the books and such, the BG's have "units" spread throughout the other factions working for them (mostly). It's quite thematic.

If you get rid of this, there's also the question of why not get rid of the Fremen Water Debt UR and make the things it enables into Fremen UUs?
Ditto for the Ix's Thinking Machines.
Ditto for Corrino's Sardaukar Cooperation.

I really like the idea of a separate place for this, rather than having it occur during normal tech progression.

Why?
10chars

I like the BG Sisterhood Covenant UR

We have the mechanic of URU, but that doesn't mean we have to use it everywhere. I agree that it makes some sense to have RM show up in the "entourage" of other leaders ... but do you *really* believe they are working in the best interest of that leader if it is against the best interest of the BG? The leader just *thinks* they are controlling the RM. The main reason for removing the URU is to give BG something actually unique. I am having trouble finding unique things for BG.

I really like the idea of a separate place for this, rather than having it occur during normal tech progression.

It's a secret project the BG have put a lot of effort into, which has no other benefit than creating a KH. Suppose we put it into the techtree. I play BG and I start picking up these units just by coincidence as I go through the tree. It doesn't feel like I did anything extra.

Nonetheless, I see many votes against the idea, and none but myself in favor. So if we take the four units I mentioned, and put them into the tree, where should they go? Social Mobility, Genetic Manipulation, Water of Life, maybe. I have renamed the tech at the far right of the tech tree to "Future Tech", so KH becomes available as a name. Can I add it as one new tech off Water of Life?

I am having trouble finding unique things for BG.

Well, really they don't make any more sense as a faction that the Guild did. I know Ahriman has said "imagine that the are manipulating a puppet house" which semi-works. The Bene Gesserit are all about behind the scenes manipulation rather than overt control, just like the Guild. It is hard to model that sort of behind the scenes manipulation in a Civ4 mod. The radical solution would be to scrap them as we did the Guild, you could still have RMs, but we probably don't want to do that for variety reasons.

I quite like the URU mechanic for them, but maybe they could be a sort of FFH2 world spell that turns all Reverend Mothers back to Bene Gesserit. In the fiction BGs are allowed some freedom but the loyalty is called in from time to time. You could have a trade off you can build a Reverend Mother to train your troops, etc, but there is always a risk she might be recalled by the BG leadership.

Some kind of modelling of the breeding program might be interesting. If the BG have good diplomatic relations with two different cis then you could have a change that an offspring of those two factions is born. If this is repeated several times you could collect offspring in a some sort of family tree towards the Kwisatz Haderach.

I have no problem with making them all UU's rather than URUs. I agree with David on this point.

I play BG and I start picking up these units just by coincidence as I go through the tree. It doesn't feel like I did anything extra.

Then, alternatively, why not make them like a FFH hero unit; they are built with hammers, but you can only ever have one copy, and if that dies, you can never replace it.
That way, you still have to do something extra to get one (hammers), but don't have to use separate techs.

If you like, rather than building the unit, you could have 4 projects, each which triggers an event when created that creates the unit as appropriate.

I don't like the idea that the Bene Gesserit will be backward in tech, because they devote resources to their KH project.

As for techs:
I like the idea of one being available early, probably at the Theocracy tech (or whatever we rename it). I'm not sure Social Mobility makes sense. But otherwise:
Water of Life and Genetic Manipulation make sense.

Can I add it as one new tech off Water of Life?

I forget the exact tech structure now (and which techs are requirements), but the final KH tech should probably require Genetic Manipulation AND Mind training AND Water of Life at a minimum. I have no problem with the final one being a new tech. But I think the intermediates should not.

but there is always a risk she might be recalled by the BG leadership.

This sounds very not-fun to me. Arbitrarily losing your units is nearly always bad design IMO.

Some kind of modelling of the breeding program might be interesting.
I don't think this is wise. I don't think it would be fun, and I don't think the AI would understand it.

It's a secret project the BG have put a lot of effort into, which has no other benefit than creating a KH. Suppose we put it into the techtree. I play BG and I start picking up these units just by coincidence as I go through the tree. It doesn't feel like I did anything extra.
I play BG and I start picking up these units just by coincidence as I go through the tree. It doesn't feel like I did anything extra.

why dont you compromise.

instead of integrating the Units directly into the current tech tree, make the units require a series of Projects requiring different techs to be built in cities before they can be constructed. this way the BG diverts their production to their 'secret project' while still maintaining a normal tech progression.

OK, I have split up RM mechanics into (a) training ability on Sayyadina, (b) Reverend Mother becomes a URU spy unit, (c) prescience moves to a set of four KH units of increasing power.

English language question on names for the four KH units. I don't want "Kwisatz Haderach I, II, III, IV". I want to find words which will still give a feeling of progression. How about:

Kwisatz Precursor
Kwisatz Candidate
Kwisatz Finalist
Kwisatz Haderach

Is it clear to English speakers what order these should go in? Is it at all clear to non-native English speakers? Precursor is an uncommon word.

I dislike "finalist". Candidate and precursor are fine. How about Precursor -> Aspirant -> Candidate -> Haderach?

Do we have a consensus on making them world units or projects, integrated into the tech tree?

Can we have an early building that gives Espionage points?

I would argue if you want one of these to be URU, the Sayyadina fits better than the Reverend Mother. Trainers just train people; they can't really control how that training is used, whether it is to benefit the BG or not. RMs will always really be loyal to the Sisterhood (rare exceptions like Jessica excepted). Besides, we could interpret Jessica as a Sayyadina, doing training for the Fremen.
Plus, the various diplomatic machinations should really be a faction-specific ability, not available to their friends. They're a core faction ability, less interesting if others can get them too.
[Along these lines; could we also have some Fremen units or mechanics that are really faction specific, rather than URUs? Things like the vehicle capture mechanic could work here I suppose.]

I don't like the idea of an ally of the BG's having reverend mothers potentially building their own RMs and using them against the BG player.

I dislike "finalist". Candidate and precursor are fine. How about Precursor -> Aspirant -> Candidate -> Haderach?

I hope to find a set of names so it is clear what order they come in. I think "finalist" is clear. Is it clear whether "candidate > aspirant" or the reverse?

Do we have a consensus on making them world units or projects, integrated into the tech tree?

Rarely. The only xml implementation I can find for a single irreplaceable unit is with custom techs granting a free unit. There are several possible implementations with sdk changes, such as adding a free unit field to projects; I am considering alternatives.

Along these lines; could we also have some Fremen units or mechanics that are really faction specific, rather than URUs? Things like the vehicle capture mechanic could work here I suppose.

This is stalled, because I have not been able to solve the problem of poor expansion for their sandrider settlers. This may be solved in 1.6.4 but it will take confirmation by playtesting. If it is solved, then we can go onto the next phase of reducing their access to vehicles and giving them a capture ability.

I don't like the idea of an ally of the BG's having reverend mothers potentially building their own RMs and using them against the BG player.

That is certainly a good point. In 1.6.4 I am not going to try touching super spies to add missions or restrictions. So temporarily, the RM will not be such a useful unit. Once I have some spy missions with diplomacy effects working, we can revisit this.

I think "finalist" is clear

Finalist makes it sound like a race, or a competition, which isn't really correct.

I think its more important to have names that don't sound silly. If you're worried about interpretation, then just add a numeral to the end. "Kwizatz Precusor (I)", "Kwizatz Aspirant" (II) etc.

There are several possible implementations with sdk changes, such as adding a free unit field to projects; I am considering alternatives.
Why not just have the unit created by event when the a particular project is completed? That woudl require no sdk, right?

This may be solved in 1.6.4 but it will take confirmation by playtesting
Sounds fine. All I really wanted to do was signal that while we might be done with UUs *for now*, we should be aware that this still probably isn't our final model.

Once I have some spy missions with diplomacy effects working, we can revisit this.
Fair enough. Should they just have regular missions for now, and maybe 2 base movement points?

Where are you putting the Sayyadina unit. Maybe the Theocracy/religious rule tech (did you pick a name?).

I hope to find a set of names so it is clear what order they come in. I think "finalist" is clear. Is it clear whether "candidate > aspirant" or the reverse?

How about Elect? So Precursor -> Aspirant -> Elect -> Kwizatz Haderach?

I'm not sure using the prefix Kwizatz with these really works though. Kwizatz Haderach means the Shortening of the Way so you are taking half of that phrase and putting it with an English word. Plus I think the phrase Kwizatz Haderach should only be used for the final stage to keep it special. Provided the names of the stages are documented, it should be OK.

If it is solved, then we can go onto the next phase of reducing their access to vehicles and giving them a capture ability.

Sounds good. I wish you luck in cracking the Fremen AI issue - I thought you'd made some progress?

I would argue if you want one of these to be URU, the Sayyadina fits better than the Reverend Mother.

I'd support that.

Why not just have the unit created by event when the a particular project is completed? That woudl require no sdk, right?

Consider also the documentation. The hover help in the tech chooser says "Free <unitclass> to first player", which is not correct but close. With an event there is no hover help (without sdk).

I'm not sure using the prefix Kwizatz with these really works though. Kwizatz Haderach means the Shortening of the Way so you are taking half of that phrase and putting it with an English word.

I know it is not linguistically correct, but a name like "Kwisatz Candidate" should be easy to remember that it is like a Kwisatz Haderach, only not quite perfect (not as powerful) yet. If you want to suggest three names which the user can tell are (a) related to Kwisatz Haderach and (b) which order they go in, that would be great.

How about Elect? So Precursor -> Aspirant -> Elect -> Kwizatz Haderach?

Could work. What is the term used in the book, when discussing Fenring?

I'm not sure using the prefix Kwizatz with these really works though. Kwizatz Haderach means the Shortening of the Way so you are taking half of that phrase and putting it with an English word.

This is true, but I can't think of an alternative that would still make it clear that these were part of the Kwizatz Haderach breeding project.
Unless you wanted:
Candidate Generation 1 -> Candidate generation 2 -> Candidate generation 3 -> Kwizatz Haderach.

I don't think that Precursor -> Aspirant -> Elect -> Kwizatz Haderach would make the connection clear enough.
Another thnig though; we have a bit more space in that we can name Projects, if these are being created by projects.
Or maybe these should be "Breeding Project I", "Breeding Project II" etc.?

Consider also the documentation. The hover help in the tech chooser says "Free <unitclass> to first player", which is not correct but close. With an event there is no hover help (without sdk).

I don't think this is a sufficient reason to use techs rather than Projects. Here's my issue: using projects shuts down one city for a while. Using techs shuts down your entire research agenda.

You can imply some information in the name of the Project, and then in the pedia text for the project.

As german reader, I can "guess" the meaning of precursor. I think it's "Vorauswahl"... already the silble "pre" makes clear, that it is an early trial ;)

I'd like to have the word "born" in one or two of the KHs. Someone posted earlier, that Leto II also was "only" a "pre-born"-version. So "pre-born" could be one name...

Candidate and Aspirant sound a bit "marketing-like" (to me)...
...I think, they are "genetic-breed", so the words should fit better in the family of the words "genetical" or "breed"... but being no native speaker, I got no idea, which words could be used ;)
...because of this, also my "feelings" towards different words should not be trusted that much, if not confirmed by someone else :D

Greetz, Hived.

P.S.: I'd let them build a "regular" building (UB of course), to have access to their "specialists", so they have to do something to get them. I agree to the fact, that advancing their techtree logically leaves them behind in regular techs.

What is the term used in the book, when discussing Fenring?

"Fenring was one of the might-have-beens, an almost Kwisatz Haderach, crippled by a flaw in the genetic pattern — a eunuch, his talent concentrated into furtiveness and inner seclusion."

"Almost" doesn't quite have the right ring to it. :)

Calling the projects Breeding Program I, Breeding Program II, etc as Ahriman suggests sounds good.

If you want to suggest three names which the user can tell are (a) related to Kwisatz Haderach and (b) which order they go in, that would be great

That sounds like an impossible mission so let's go for the "Kwisatz Candidate" fudge.

Could work. What is the term used in the book, when discussing Fenring?

"Failed", actually. I looked through the appendices and the dune encyclopedia pdf but did not find any canon term for the almost-made-its.

Here's my issue: using projects shuts down one city for a while. Using techs shuts down your entire research agenda.

Well, they're supposed to cost a lot of *something*. What do you suggest?

"Fenring was one of the might-have-beens, an almost Kwisatz Haderach, crippled by a flaw in the genetic pattern — a eunuch, his talent concentrated into furtiveness and inner seclusion."
"Failed", actually.

Hmm. These don't help us much.

Well, they're supposed to cost a lot of *something*. What do you suggest?

To clarify: I have no problem with the project implementation (shutting down one city for a while is fine).

.S.: I'd let them build a "regular" building (UB of course), to have access to their "specialists", so they have to do something to get them.
The URU can't require a UB, or it won't be buildable by others.
How about my earlier idea:
Missionaria Protectiva building, gives +5 espionage points per turn. Requires Faith tech.
Required in order to build Reverend Mother unit.

Even if we name the projects "Breeding Program I,II,III,IV" we still have to name the units. It is likely that the first level unit will still be around when the second level unit comes on line. I think this is a great bit of roleplaying, where the first level guy knows the second level, "new improved" model is around, and he is just waiting to be suicided against some city he is not quite strong enough to take.

I have not make much progress on actually implementing this today (but there were 200+ new posts on the forum!). For 1.6.4, I am hoping Slvynn will send the building art pretty soon (but there were 200+ new posts on the forum!). I will try something small for 1.6.4; I think I will just put the first level unit only, into the main tech tree. All I need to do is find a good way to make the unit irreplaceable.

We can work out the exact names and other mechanics for 1.6.5, so let's continue the discussion.

I'd like to have the word "born" in one or two of the KHs. Someone posted earlier, that Leto II also was "only" a "pre-born"-version. So "pre-born" could be one name...

Pre-born means something different, unrelated to the Kwizatz Haderach. It means you carry the lives, experiences and memories of all your ancestors within you.

Alia, Leto II and Ghanima are pre-born in the books , but Paul isn't.

I have not make much progress on actually implementing this today (but there were 200+ new posts on the forum!).

I've realised that sitting on this forum is a bad idea if you want to get any modding done. I've started closing down the browser when I have some modding tasks to do. :)

we still have to name the units

I think the strongest suggestion is probably:
Kwizatz Precursor (I) -> Kwizatz Aspirant (II) -> Kwizatz Candidate (III) or Kwizatz Elect (III) -> Kwizatz Haderach

Pre-born means something different, unrelated to the Kwizatz Haderach.

This is true, but there *is* the interesting question of whether Paul was really the Kwizatz Haderach, or whether Leto II really was.

I've realised that sitting on this forum is a bad idea if you want to get any modding done. I've started closing down the browser when I have some modding tasks to do. :)

Great, now you made everybody close their browsers and work on modding. :-)

It might be possible to have a BG resources related URU that gives the owner some benefit, like the automatic training, and also gives the BG one (or more) espionage point per turn (per unit) towards that civ to represent the unit passing information back to the BG. A tradeoff, but better than having your units suddenly change sides.

Interesting idea, but probably hard to code and not very transparent to the player. How would you see that some of your espionage income was coming from units built and controlled by other factions?
I think its probably too complex for too low a payoff.
It seems simpler to just let the trainer be a URU unit.

Pre-born means something different, unrelated to the Kwizatz Haderach. It means you carry the lives, experiences and memories of all your ancestors within you.

Alia, Leto II and Ghanima are pre-born in the books , but Paul isn't.

Pre-born actually means the person awakened to consciousness in the womb, or before birth. The danger of this is that the person hasn't developed their own identity and thus are easily possessed by one of their ancestors. All reverend mothers have all of the memories, experiences, personalities, etc from the female line of all their ancestors as well as any memories passed on to them from another reverend mother. Reverend mothers are conditioned and trained to accept this and are able to fight possession, whereas the preborn are not. Hence the term abomination!

No, no, abominations are when a Circle Mage is possessed by a demon and -er... maybe I need to stop playing Dragon Age.

Awesome game, btw.

I think it would be relatively easy to code in python - although I haven't messed with espionage points. It looks like one check either at the beginning or end of each turn that counts the units of that type that are owned by each player other than the BG in each team (espionage points are mostly done via CyTeam), multiplied by the EP per unit, and apply them using CyTeam.changeEspionagePointsAgainstTeam.

There could be info added to the unit via the Help tag that indicates that the unit provides +X:espionage: per turn to the BG and a message sent to the BG player that their Sayyadinas have given them Y :espionage: points vs team/player Z. Since they only get 3 of the resources and are unlikely to trade more than 2 that would normally be 2 or fewer messages per turn after the unit can be created.

Another possibility, which could be done instead or in addition to the above, is to give the BG player visibility at the location of all of the URUs. It could be just the one plot, or that plot plus all adjacent plots. This is probably even easier to implement and explain (and understand) and it involves no messages.

The idea is that in the source material the BG have people everywhere. Those people provide some benefit to the other factions because if they didn't nobody would have them there. But they also provide a benefit, primarily in the form of information, to the BG. So to have the game match the source, there ought to be some BG unit that provides a benefit to the non-BG players but also provides some information to the BG player. Two types of information are the simple visibility of plots and the information represented by espionage points. And maybe...

Another possible benefit is that the BG could get production bonuses for their Kwizatz Haderach related projects (or techs) for each player that builds their URU (so 0, 1, or 2 times some number) or per URU they build. This would represent having greater access to a wider variety of people/genetics to study and/or use in the breeding program. This is probably not much harder to implement the actual bonus, but could be harder to explain in a short blurb in the unit help text and it may be desirable to have some additional game text that points out the production, or research, bonus which could be harder to add (it may be doable in the python for the screens, but I'm not certain). As interesting as it is (to me), the difficulty in making it appear in the game text in the various places may make it less usable than my other two suggestions.

All of this has the weigh the benefits of implementation vs. the cost of implementation and upkeep in future versions. I think that having a variety of mechanics that are different from regular BtS is a good thing - it is one of the selling points of that most popular mod FfH: interesting things that are not in the regular game.

Since the easiest from both the standpoint of implementation and explanation/understanding is the plot visibility, that might be the one to use (if one is going to be used).

I appreciate the fluff concept you're trying to model, its just finding ways that are easy to code, mildly useful, and transparent to the human player where they come from.

Another possibility, which could be done instead or in addition to the above, is to give the BG player visibility at the location of all of the URUs.

I like this better, then it is much more transparent to the player. They can observe what it is giving them the line of sight bonus.
Not sure how easy to code it is.

Issue: what happens if there are multiple Bene Gesserit factions? All of them gain line of sight for all Sayyadinas, anywhere in the world?

Another possible benefit is that the BG could get production bonuses for their Kwizatz Haderach related projects
As you say, not very transparent.

Another possibility, which could be done instead or in addition to the above, is to give the BG player visibility at the location of all of the URUs. It could be just the one plot, or that plot plus all adjacent plots.

I agree adding EP is easy. Do you know how to give visibility at arbitrary plots in python? What happens during my turn, if the AI player has multiple of my URUs moving around? Do the visibility plots move also?

Maybe at the start of each Bene Gesserit player's turn, you create a line of sight in the 3x3 tiles around every Sayyadina. At the end of the turn, you destroy them all.

So you can see them during your turn, but not during enemy moves?
Or maybe at the start of your turn, you destroy all old sightlines and immediately create new sightlines at the current position of the units?

So you can see movement in between turns based on where the unit was?

I'm sure you could easily create an EP flow in Python, but this wouldn't be readily apparent to the human BG player where the income was coming from.

I'm sure you could easily create an EP flow in Python, but this wouldn't be readily apparent to the human BG player where the income was coming from.

Good point. With a little more work, we could create a new subtotal. I don't have the game right here at the moment, but I know that the hover help for city health includes a breakdown from several sources such as buildings, terrain, etc. These are subtotals which help understand the flow. Assuming there is a similar espionage subtotal display, we could add a new subtotal for "Foreign Reverend Mothers".

Hmm. This might be sufficient. I don't know.

I certainly like the feel that these mechanics are trying to invoke. Very flavorful.

Again the issue: what happens with multiple BG factions in the same game? You probably can't really tie a particular Sayyadina to BG faction A rather than BG faction B; the only way would be a very cumbersome system to see whether A or B was trading Sisterhood Covenant to faction C when C built that particular Sayyinda unit. Which is too complex.

So, does every BG faction in the game get free espionage points for every Sayyadina controlled by every non-BG faction?
But your own Sayyadinas don't?
Do BG_A's Sayyadinas give info to BG_B and vice versa?

I agree adding EP is easy. Do you know how to give visibility at arbitrary plots in python? What happens during my turn, if the AI player has multiple of my URUs moving around? Do the visibility plots move also?

It may be a bit more difficult than I thought. First, as far as I know there is no way to set a unit to give visibility for anybody but the owner (sans SDK modifications). So a simple loop over the units for the players that have some (CyPlayer.getUnitClassCount will tell you who has some) revealing the plots at, and possibly around, the locations of the URUs is what I had in mind.

But the CyPlot.setRevealed function is more complicated than I expected (assuming this is the right function). It takes 4 parameters, including two team values: setRevealed(TeamType eTeam, BOOL bNewValue, BOOL bTerrainOnly, TeamType eFromTeam), and I can't say that I know how it works. (I'm setting visibility for one team, what's the second team parameter for?) I also don't know if it is persistent or gets cleared every turn. And I thought it was easier than the espionage thing...

I was thinking it would just show the plots at (or around, if showing the adjacent plots) the current locations during the BG's turn.

Hmm. This might be sufficient. I don't know.

I certainly like the feel that these mechanics are trying to invoke. Very flavorful.

Again the issue: what happens with multiple BG factions in the same game? You probably can't really tie a particular Sayyadina to BG faction A rather than BG faction B; the only way would be a very cumbersome system to see whether A or B was trading Sisterhood Covenant to faction C when C built that particular Sayyinda unit. Which is too complex.

So, does every BG faction in the game get free espionage points for every Sayyadina controlled by every non-BG faction?
But your own Sayyadinas don't?
Do BG_A's Sayyadinas give info to BG_B and vice versa?

I hadn't considered multiple BG factions providing the resource.

Perhaps each URU could be tagged via the script data associated with the unit as to which BG faction was trading the resource to the player (and therefore receives the benefit) when the unit was built, and picking one at random if they are somehow trading for one from each (you can't normally trade for a resource you already have unless it is associated with a corporation, so this shouldn't happen much - I can only think of one way at the moment: if the player is one of the 2 BG civs, trades all 3 of their resources away, trades for one of the other BG's, then cancels one of the deals giving them their own version and the other's version). This could be done in the onUnitBuilt callback. Probably. I don't know how to get the list of who's trading what to a given player. Looking at the code for the "active trades" screen should be helpful.

I have a new idea for BG civ.
The meditation called “prana-bindu trance” is very common thing in books. Its really dominant feature of Bene Gesserits, and its basic training which anyone who is BG posess.
What if we’ll add BG specific action to all guardsman/melee BG units which:
1. Require full movement being not spent (if units have 2 moves it should have 2 of them un-spent)
2. Heals unit 10% to +15%, stacking with ent-turn natural heal rate.
3. Consumes all ubit's movement points, reducing them to 0.
That will add more favor and more connection to lore. Prana-bindu is something we need to implement into the mod.

I agree that prana-bindu musculature control is an important aspect of Bene Gesserit sister training, but I don't think that this works at the strategic level of the mod. I think it would be very strange for regular soldiers to be regenerating and repairing vehicles faster and replacing troops losses based on the medidation techniques of their leaders. That would detract from immersion.

I think we do not need to include every single Dune concept or piece of vocabulary in the game, only those that really *work* at a strategic level.

To me, prana-bindu control is part of the training program. If we wanted to implement it, I think it would be better for our Sayyadina trainers to give a Prana-bindu control promotion (maybe 2 levels of it) which gives first strikes, rather than giving Drill promotions.

It is not skill of leaders. And please note - i told Melee and guardsman units only.
Also please note - that almost no BG males in books - but those who learned from BGs (Halleck, Paul, Farad'n) knew prana bindu. Its simple thing for melee and guardsman units.
You disagree on every post of mine, Ahriman, :P :) so i'd like to hear denial for this certain idea from david or deliverator.

Also its is not program of training program. Its technique. Known even by BG adepts.

I just browsed books in english and found alot of mentions. I fail to see how its connected to first strikes. I checked alot , made some research before posting

Don't feel bad, Ahriman disagrees with most of my ideas also. And I disagree with a lot of his. It is a lively debate, where ideas get even better. It is not a personal attack.

I was planning to start a thread to ask, "Which Dune book terms do not yet appear in the game?" Prana-bindu is certainly a good one. In previous releases the Reverend Mother teaches combat and drill promotions, in 1.6.4 it is the Sayyadina unit. But that unit could also teach Medic I, or a slight variant on that which gives a weak March. I agree it should not apply to vehicle units. I could go either way on guardsmen; it does not magically replace bullets and ammunition. But it seems like it has good synergy on melee units.

You disagree on every post of mine, Ahriman

I disagree with almost every post of everyone. I think my best contribution as a designer is to point out the flaws in any proposal, so that they can be improved.
That's kinda from my economist training too; point out unintended consequences of policy changes.

And as far as your contributions, I think your art changes have been fantastic. As I've said, several times.

I fail to see how its connected to first strikes

The idea is that the muscle control is part of what makes Jessica et al so deadly in melee combat; it basically heightens reflexes, which allows you to dodge enemy attacks (note that giving me a first strike is the same as reducing your first strikes by one) or allows them to get in the first blow in melee.
It doesn't cause regeneration, or allow you to get wounded troops back into the field faster.

I didn't reject your idea of including Prana-bindu in the mod, I suggested incorporating it explicitly into our training mechanic. I think it would be much more flavorful to have Sayyadinas teach Muscle Control or something than to teach Drill promotion.

But that unit could also teach Medic I
I'd suggest against teachnig medic; medic benefits the whole stack. If you wanted something like this, just give medic 1 to the Sayyadina unit, so she provides healing if and only if she's actually in the stack.

or a slight variant on that which gives a weak March
I don't really see how you can weaken march. Either you heal while moving or you don't.

I disagree with almost every post of everyone. I think my best contribution as a designer is to point out the flaws in any proposal, so that they can be improved.
That's kinda from my economist training too; point out unintended consequences of policy changes.

I starting to know you better here, its a good way, but not in fanaticism. Kael told 75% of propositions should be declined but all weighted. Not 99% :P

And as far as your contributions, I think your art changes have been fantastic. As I've said, several times.

Thanks, :) Simple seems denials come much more often than artworks of mine :P i need to improve speed
joke
Cheers man, when i knowing you just start with deial because its your way, i know you as less open minded, so its not neutral, not equal point of view, which present negative perspective, which is also good, but in mixture with other side, brought to middle


The idea is that the muscle control is part of what makes Jessica et al so deadly in melee combat; it basically heightens reflexes, which allows you to dodge enemy attacks (note that giving me a first strike is the same as reducing your first strikes by one) or allows them to get in the first blow in melee.
It doesn't cause regeneration, or allow you to get wounded troops back into the field faster.

She uses it to manipulate reality, and its main tehcnique why BG remain not aged (+spice obcourse)
Just remeber lessons of her with Farad'n and few other places where Paul/Leto II used it to combat hardships.


I'd suggest against teachnig medic; medic benefits the whole stack. If you wanted something like this, just give medic 1 to the Sayyadina unit, so she provides healing if and only if she's actually in the stack

I don't really see how you can weaken march. Either you heal while moving or you don't.


I agree that training should not use medic/march, but drill and retreat stuff
and prana-bindu should be single (melee?/guardsman) unit ability to heal bit more spending own movement

Prana-bindu training and the weirding way
The Bene Gesserit develop their physical abilities as well as their mental abilities. A trained Sister has full control over each muscle in her body through training known as prana-bindu. This allows her to bend the last joint in her little toe while remaining otherwise motionless, bend and contort her body in ways that most would consider impossible, or put a remarkable amount of force behind a physical blow. The mental part of prana-bindu, or prana-nervature (prana stands for breath, bindu stands for musculature) is the precise control of the totality of nerves in the human body. In Dune, Reverend Mother Mohiam tests Paul with a nerve induction device that causes the sensation of intense pain. Paul learns that he is not the only one to have tried it, but is perhaps specially resistant; this conversation points to a widespread use of it as a tool among the Bene Gesserit to measure self control, nerve control, and as Mohiam puts it, crisis and observation.

Unarmed attacks are part of the specialized martial art called the weirding way, which incorporates the prana-bindu methods of optimized muscle control, which enable one to deliver powerful blows and to move with extreme precision and speed. The basic principle behind the weirding way is that, as Farad'n Corrino says, "My mind affects my reality." A user of the weirding way has to know that the action he or she "wants" to perform has already been performed. For example, to imagine oneself behind an opponent at the current moment in time; when trained well, this knowledge will place you at the spot desired. As the art's prana bindu incorporation allows even small attacks to do massive damage, weirding way combat is to the death.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bene_Gesserit#Prana-bindu_training_and_the_weirding_way

The idea of prana-bindu "manipulating my reality" is meant to be somewhat metaphorical; you imagine you are manipulating reality with your mind, which allows your body to do so.

But it isn't telekinesis or anything like that; you aren't literally changing reality with your mind alone. I think its about fine-tuned muscle/nerve control, not healing injuries.

i know you as less open minded, so its not neutral, not equal point of view
I don't think that being critical is the same as being closed-minded.

Think of it this way: I follow the Amtal Rule theory of design.
Amtal (or Amtal Rule) – "Common rule on primitive worlds under which something is tested to determine its limits or defects. Commonly: testing to destruction."[2] "To know a thing well, know its limits. Only when pushed beyond its tolerances will true nature be seen

I'd suggest against teachnig medic; medic benefits the whole stack. If you wanted something like this, just give medic 1 to the Sayyadina unit, so she provides healing if and only if she's actually in the stack. I don't really see how you can weaken march. Either you heal while moving or you don't.

The promotions can individually control several things, as you can tell from the xml field names:

iEnemyHealChange
iNeutralHealChange
iFriendlyHealChange
iSameTileHealChange
iAdjacentTileHealChange
bAlwaysHeal

So we could define a new Prana-Bindu promotion, taught by the Sayyadina, which improves the healing rate in enemy, neutral, friendly territory. It would not give any same or adjacent healing like medic. For a second level promotion, it could also give the March flag, bAlwaysHeal.

Prana-bindu helps to regenerate and to recover from shocks in some moments of books

Also i am not Amtal rule one - i take thing and transform it, till it get shape of my desire. I am more Prana-Bindu one. If you have Will and Desire you will be shape thing into proper one. Consider me as son of Ecaz mind-shaper and BG mother. :P
I not indend to deny things - i transform things even if change result is completely differs from starting point if start test passes, and my start test - is intuition's "accept" or "denial".

The promotions can individually control several things, as you can tell from the xml field names:

Ok. These seem to me like weakened versions of medic, rather than march, but that is pure semantics. Faster healing in own territory/neutral territory (without heal while moving) seems fine from a gameplay perspective, though still strange from a fluff perspective.
But why should prana-bindu be improving healing? It seems like it should be about combat performance.

Prana-bindu helps to regenerate and to recover from shocks in some moments of books
Perhaps you mean something different by regenerate than its normal English interpretation.
Can you give an example, please?

I guess I can see it allowing recovery from *mental* shocks, but only the supreme biochemical control techniques of the BGs (which cannot be taught to ordinary soldiers) could help recovery from physical shocks.

I don't really like the idea of a prana-bindu promotion. I know it is a term we are not using yet, but I don't think it is a very exciting one either. Having a promotion called Prana-Bindu is like having a promotion called Yoga.

The weirding way is a more appropriate term to use for where the BG train fighters not in the Sisterhood. The weirding way is a style of infighting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infighting) and makes more sense for a military promotion. I'd rather have Sayyadinas give Weirding Way promotions and rebrand the late game tech I think we have called that. There is evidence in the books that the Weirding Way is taught to troops en masse, but the entire Bene Gesserit training (including Prana-Bindu) is only given to a few aristocratic individuals outside the Sisterhood such as Paul and Farad'n.

Don't feel bad, Ahriman disagrees with most of my ideas also. And I disagree with a lot of his. It is a lively debate, where ideas get even better. It is not a personal attack.

Agreed. You have to learn to not feel too attached to your ideas. Just throw them out there, and see how they float. Some Ahriman will smack down like whack-a-mole, some will go on and be developed and find their way into the mod.

But why should prana-bindu be improving healing? It seems like it should be about combat performance.

When I think of pranu-bindu I think of the scenes in the book where Paul or others were meditating, trying to move just one muscle. So it doesn't seem like a combat technique. Healing may not match precisely, but we already have a bunch of combat and drill promotions. A variant healing promotion, tagged with a common name from the books, seems like a good addition.

Maybe +10% on heal rates in friendly, enemy and neutral territory? The icon could be similar to a Buddha figure meditating with crossed legs.

Prana-bindu seems to me like action, not as promotion. Consider it as spell.

Use it, meditate, lose movement points.
Thats a how it in books.
MAy be not healing , but something other as action
Some beneficial "spell" like abilitiy - that wears after 1-few turns? Like blades/courage combined in FFH?

perhaps mother only.... or may be not.... Paul and Leto were semi-KH, so may be all KH line should have such action, but if assume mother as spy unit - then it makes no sence...
so still, its good thing for some melee units.

I don't really like the idea of a prana-bindu promotion.

Well, we could call it Muscle Control or Improved Reflexes or Weirding Way or something instead. I just think that we could probably have somethnig more flavorful than having Bene Gesserits teching units Drill.

but the entire Bene Gesserit training (including Prana-Bindu) is only given to a few aristocratic individuals outside the Sisterhood such as Paul and Farad'n.
Agreed.

When I think of pranu-bindu I think of the scenes in the book where Paul or others were meditating, trying to move just one muscle

That isn't what I get, particularly from the post 95 quote. Prana-bindu is a physical technique used to improve reflexes and control of the body. It is not meditation. The mental part of Prana-bindu is called Prana-nervature, and that is about improved self-control.

Improved medicine/healing seems like something that should come from the Suk school, not from Bene Gesserit.

Use it, meditate, lose movement points.
Thats a how it in books.
I don't recall anything in the books where armies stopped moving for days or months in order to meditate.

We could have a meditation/healing ability on the various Kwizatz-Haderach units if you liked, I'd have no objection to that. But rather than trying to make a spell that removed movement points, why not use the existing mechanic and have a promotion on them that gives +100% healing rate, so that the unit can heal in a single turn, but like normal units it can't heal while moving?

Wait, what? Kwisatz Haderach unit(S), as in plural? Isn't there really only one KH?

Please read the rest of this thread. There is one Kwizatz Haderach, but there are several attempts, such as Count Fenring. We're planning a sequential set of units leading to the KH.

Gotcha. I do remember reading that somewhere. It was probably here, but I most likely forgot. It has been a long week.

OK, I have completed the sdk change to add a civilization prerequisite and a free unit to projects. Since you can only complete a project once, this means the unit will be irreplaceable. I propose the following projects, limited to the Bene Gesserit player:

Breeding Program I, requires Social Mobility tech, costs 125, creates one free Kwisatz Precursor (+25% to all units in stack, +1 plot visibility range)

Breeding Program II, requires Benevolence tech and Breeding Program I, costs 250, creates one free Kwisatz Aspirant (+25% to all units in stack, +1 first strike, +2 plot visibility range)

Breeding Program III, requires Mind Training tech and Breeding Program II, costs 500, creates one free Kwisatz Candidate (+25% to all units in stack, +1 first strike, +4 plot visibility range, immune to first strikes)

Breeding Program IV, requires Water of Life tech and Breeding Program III, costs 1000, creates one free Kwisatz Haderach (+50% to all units in stack, +2 first strikes, +4 plot visibility range, immune to first strikes)

What do you think?

I think that techs you assigned is very early ones. I think last unit should come at last technology in tech tree.
Paul was not full KH - and Water Of Life was "known", Water of Life is not enough to complete project. I'd place lvl 3 or lvl 2 to Water of Life. Lvl 1 should go somewhere in Benevolence.

As for Prana-Bindu

I browsed through books, and i found several cases where it's called "forced relaxation"

i though about it and i think best way to fit it is promotion - "Training of Prana-bindu"
Like skill.
Action is not good.
Anyways its very dominant thing in the books for BG and we must to implement it somehow. :)


As for Amtal rule - calling and doing is different things. Amtal rule means not pre-denying - but testing, accepting things to hard tests. Pre-denying is something really different with Amtal. I like idea Amtal rule myself, but 1st, you need to adopt tested for testing, and start your testing.

On personal note, pre-denying of numerous things bring men to tired state, its hard to create things when your mind encounter wall. Battling and arguing makes mind tired. And this exhaustion makes us losing fun of creation. Thats why koma left ,i have no doubt. One cant say his way completely right, we are not gods, we still live in real world . Please think about it Ahriman, as i will think about my amplified reactions and will try to move towards you. This is team work, killed fun and tiresome battling for ideas are very bad for our work, when unrestrained and abundant. I am not that uncoherent, and at least, there are things which invisible for you but i can see them, and opposite, things which i blind to them, and you know them very well. Pre-Denying is not testing to death, and i have no problems with latter.
:)
(I love philosophy and psychology and this is quite interesting talk for me, some people dont like this attitude, but when understood, its appreciated, in long term. Is only friendly attempt to make our teamwork stable, balanced and more effecient, and main - more fun)
cheers :) and i also appreciate your immence job, which is great and it's results are great. Its not about rightness. Its about providing fun of co-work for other teammates. If there different oppinions and you win to often - you get your fun, but others lose it, and somehow it may be good to compensate it abit with just more polite and diplomatic denying.
And nommater if this thing changes or not - i've said my part here and stop. There is no need of saying good things over and over.
And i'll be and put my job to art, at least, to this mod, because i love Dune, mod, and job you done for it.

i though about it and i think best way to fit it is promotion - "Training of Prana-bindu"
Anyways its very dominant thing in the books for BG and we must to implement it somehow.

I think very dominant is over-stating it a bit, but it is an important part of the Bene Gesserit training.

I just think that we could probably have somethnig more flavorful than having Bene Gesserits teching units Drill.

As I said, I think a promotion for non-BG units that are trained by them should be called Weirding Way. The Weirding Way incorporates some of the physical muscle training aspects of prana-bindu. If we do have a prana-bindu promotion I think it should only be available to the BG UUs, Sayyadina, Reverend Mother, etc.

Another alternative would be to have a Prana-Bindu Training Centre unique building for the Bene Gesserit. Basically, I still can't get excited about something akin to Yoga being a combat promotion.

If we were to do as david suggests and start a 'What significant items from the books are not yet represented in the mod?' thread, there'd be things other than prana-bindu I'd be more excited about.

But that's only my opinion... :)

Thats why koma left ,i have no doubt.

The bottom line was that Koma had a very different Dune mod in mind. He wants to make a Dune mod for Colonization.

The debate is pretty fierce at times, and I'm sure some lurkers are put off posting by that ferocity sometimes. But I do believe that good ideas stand up to scrutiny, and the mod has been improved by debating new ideas rather than just indiscriminately adding them.

The debate is pretty fierce at times, and I'm sure some lurkers are put off posting by that ferocity sometimes. But I do believe that good ideas stand up to scrutiny, and the mod has been improved by debating new ideas rather than just indiscriminately adding them.

I agree with this. But i think we'll halt discussion about this matter, and origins of ferocity, which are several. There are factor of form, politency, but for me all is sweet those just lessons of life, even of forum. One should halt talking if not being understood (about something which isn't game related, but more personality oriented) for long time, better i will just do things where i am proficient, and avoid situations and replies, which form offends me, it do, and i know, its my problem, as well.
This is really not a place to discuss it - so lets end it here. I can talk in Pm, but i think noone needs and wants it, but if you do - you are wellcome. All is cool, i enjoy results of your (and my small) work, thats great, lets go on.

As for Prana-Bindu -
Check Children of Dune for example - how much times it being remebered. Almost every second chapter have prana-bindu phrase.
Really, i dont care how it may be implemented, but i think thats a very important part of BG "culture"

Breeding Program I, requires Social Mobility tech, costs 125, creates one free Kwisatz Precursor (+25% to all units in stack, +1 plot visibility range)

Breeding Program II, requires Benevolence tech and Breeding Program I, costs 250, creates one free Kwisatz Aspirant (+25% to all units in stack, +1 first strike, +2 plot visibility range)

Breeding Program III, requires Mind Training tech and Breeding Program II, costs 500, creates one free Kwisatz Candidate (+25% to all units in stack, +1 first strike, +4 plot visibility range, immune to first strikes)

Breeding Program IV, requires Water of Life tech and Breeding Program III, costs 1000, creates one free Kwisatz Haderach (+50% to all units in stack, +2 first strikes, +4 plot visibility range, immune to first strikes)

Are the first strikes for the unit, or the stack? What strength do you imagine the units having?
I guess there is a challenge here in that we want them to be tough, but we don't want them to be the toughest unit and so be the stack defender. Is there some way we could use something like part of the Hero or Channeling promotions from FFH, which makes the unit less likely to be selected as the stack defender?
I don't like having Social Mobility and Benevolence for the first two. Partly, they don't make logical sense to me, and partly they're directly adjacent to each other.
How about <renamed> Theocracy, Mind training, Water of Life, and then a final Kwizatz Haderach tech? Water of life is too early for a +50% stack bonus.

50% strength on the final one for all units in the stack might be a little large even late-game, that could make an unkillable uberstack. Maybe drop it to 35-40% and then playtest?

Anyway, generally seems good.

On personal note, pre-denying of numerous things bring men to tired state, its hard to create things when your mind encounter wall.

I'm sorry Slvynn, but I'm not going to agree with every idea you have just to make you feel better. You have a lot of interesting ideas, and some great art design, but not every concept you come up with (or anyone else comes up with, including me) will improve the mod, either in a gameplay sense or by improving Dune flavor. I don't think it is inherently impolite to disagree with other people's design ideas; I will try to make sure that my comments are polite and respectful, but I'd appreciate if you reciprocated by not throwing around wild accusations.

I'm not sure what you mean by "pre-denying". Do you really think that every idea anyone comes up with should be put into the mod, and then only removed afterwards? That would place a very high burden on coders and modders. It is much more efficient to be highly selective in what features get added, and to do as much of the critical analysis in the design phase, so to avoid wasting the valuable time of people who are adding code changes.

I think a promotion for non-BG units that are trained by them should be called Weirding Way.
This sounds good to me.

I should also clarify one more thing: I don't have anything against the idea of including Prana-bindu techniques in the mod somehow, as Slvynn says it is a concept that comes up a lot.

But I agree with Deliverator that its something that should be reserved for Bene Gesserit and key hero types, rather than ordinary soldiers, and I think it should probably be something relating to muscle control, rather than a healing meditation, and that if it is a healing effect then it is probably easier to implement that just through a higher heal rate than by creating a separate "spell", which is outside the normal AI routines.

After thinking abit: i thik that UB of Prana-Bindu as Deliverator mentioned is quite good idea. Perhaps it can give to certain elite units "Prana Bindu techniques" (knowledge) promotion whihc have own benefits. ALso we have lack of BG UBs so perhaps that can be good solution.

Also i had my hand being hurt very bad in some accident 2 days ago, mey be i am over-perceptive those days.. :-} I agre, and was agree with way where most of things rejected, i think its because we need to try to be polite sometimes more than we are, me as well, watching sequence and form, thats it.

:)

Are the first strikes for the unit, or the stack? What strength do you imagine the units having?

The combat strength bonus, first strikes, and first strike immunity apply to all units in the stack. The KH unit itself has strength 2 and the improved visibility. I did not list it, but the KH would also have first strike immunity and collateral damage immunity. These last would hardly get used since it won't be getting attacked much, but these reinforce the concept of "knowing where the enemy is, and being somewhere else".

I don't like having Social Mobility and Benevolence for the first two. Partly, they don't make logical sense to me, and partly they're directly adjacent to each other. How about <renamed> Theocracy, Mind training, Water of Life, and then a final Kwizatz Haderach tech? Water of life is too early for a +50% stack bonus.

I wanted to find techs which are all on a line, so you had to get the first tech anyway before you could get the second. I suppose this doesn't really matter since the N+1 project requires the N project. Divine Mandate (ex-Theocracy) and Mind Training are fine. One problem I had with adding a late game tech is that all of the late game techs are scientific, so nothing seems appropriate as the prerequisite. The mental and biological lines are all done by then. Water of Life leads to Golden Path; I suppose I could add a KH tech off Golden Path but I think that would be bad from the canon standpoint. Where can we put this new tech?

50% strength on the final one for all units in the stack might be a little large even late-game, that could make an unkillable uberstack. Maybe drop it to 35-40% and then playtest?

That is kind of the point. Once the BG get here, they should be unstoppable, or at least that one stack should be unstoppable. I can drop it to 40%.

After thinking abit: i thik that UB of Prana-Bindu as Deliverator mentioned is quite good idea. Perhaps it can give to certain elite units "Prana Bindu techniques" (knowledge) promotion whihc have own benefits. ALso we have lack of BG UBs so perhaps that can be good solution.

Having a building also is fine. We are stuck on what the promotion should do. I agree that castable spell effects are a problem for the AI. We already have combat and drill promotions, and I don't see too much reason to create a new promotion which does the same thing as an existing one. Apart from a +10% heal everywhere, can anybody suggest an effect?

One problem I had with adding a late game tech is that all of the late game techs are scientific, so nothing seems appropriate as the prerequisite. The mental and biological lines are all done by then. Water of Life leads to Golden Path; I suppose I could add a KH tech off Golden Path but I think that would be bad from the canon standpoint. Where can we put this new tech?

I think we should be open to changing around the late game techs a bit. I think probably Kwizatz Haderach and Golden Path should probably be on separate branches anyway. It certainly doesn't make sense that Golden Path comes before KH from a canon standpoint.
Creating some more mystical/religious techs for the late game is fine if they're needed. I haven't even played a game to the point of getting to some of those techs yet.

Can we program some new effect - as like takes 30% damage less from combat? (involving hitpoint system)
If not then just mixture of healing and 1st strike effects

or

as alternative - retreat odds +30% +10% heal rate (melee units have not retreat odds, and that will be very special for melee units)

I could add a KH tech off Water of Life. But the only effect would be to enable the final breeding project, which is Bene Gesserit only; so there may not be much point. Each of the breeding projects requires the previous one. So I could leave BP IV off the tech tree altogether; once you finish BP III you could immediately start BP IV.

If anybody has concrete suggestions for names and effects of late game mental, biological, religious techs, please let us know.

as alternative - retreat odds +30% +10% heal rate (melee units have not retreat odds, and that will be very special for melee units)

We have discussed two key effects of prana-bindu from the books: high strength and high speed. These seem to correspond to combat bonuses and first strikes. High speed can also correspond to withdraw promotions, "running away" at high speed. I can add the existing withdraw promotions to the list teachable by Sayyadinas.

Perhaps "prana-bindu" needs to go on the list of names we want to use, in ways we haven't thought of yet.

Perhaps you could add the final KH somewhere after Mentat. Paul was also trained as a Mentat, which may have aided in him becoming the KH a generation earlier than expected.

What about the 100% withdraw rate? I played with an Atreides heir unit and it is surprisingly helpful; more so than I had anticipated.

I also agree that the Golden Path should come later. I figured it would be the very last tech. Perhaps it could be a victory condition or something. I haven't used it much in game yet, but it seems a bit weak. I could be wrong though.

What about the 100% withdraw rate? I played with an Atreides heir unit and it is surprisingly helpful; more so than I had anticipated.

Let me understand this more. The 100% withdraw rate on the current Atreides Heir enables that unit to start a combat, and never die. It has no effect if that unit is attacked. Did you use this 100% withdraw rate for anything? Attacking some other, really weak unit perhaps?

I also agree that the Golden Path should come later. I figured it would be the very last tech. Perhaps it could be a victory condition or something. I haven't used it much in game yet, but it seems a bit weak. I could be wrong though.

The main goal of the GP tech is to enable the GP building. (We need to rename one of these.) This is the Qizarate temple, and it has a pretty strong effect of +5 happiness, +5 health. It also gives -25% beaker and -50% trade route yield. This is supposed to represent the stifling effect that choosing the golden path would have had on humanity, despite making them feel happy about it.

I agree we don't have much playtest feedback about this yet.

Let me understand this more. The 100% withdraw rate on the current Atreides Heir enables that unit to start a combat, and never die. It has no effect if that unit is attacked. Did you use this 100% withdraw rate for anything? Attacking some other, really weak unit perhaps?




I put the unit in a stack. The Atreides Heir always attacked first and withdrew effectively. While it didn't do a lot of damage, it would soften them up for a much stronger unit attack, thus almost ensuring victory in evenly matched battles.

I put the unit in a stack. The Atreides Heir always attacked first and withdrew effectively. While it didn't do a lot of damage, it would soften them up for a much stronger unit attack, thus almost ensuring victory in evenly matched battles.

Interesting! I guess I have not played with this unit much. I am pretty sure the AI will always attack last with this unit because it has low strength. But it is a good strategy for the human player, as long as the unit is healthy. I am sure that after you do this once, the unit is badly damaged and you cannot get much by attacking with it again, until it is healed. I guess it also does not help much in attacking late game units such as heavy scorpions.

In one way, I like the idea of "leading from the front". But does it seem realistic?

Btw i liked low str 100% withdraw chance too. If prana-bindu is elite technique make it for low str mother units (KH) and fit this escape to it.

Interesting! I guess I have not played with this unit much. I am pretty sure the AI will always attack last with this unit because it has low strength. But it is a good strategy for the human player, as long as the unit is healthy. I am sure that after you do this once, the unit is badly damaged and you cannot get much by attacking with it again, until it is healed. I guess it also does not help much in attacking late game units such as heavy scorpions.

In one way, I like the idea of "leading from the front". But does it seem realistic?

I have yet to see the AI build this unit, but I put it in the stack and attack with the whole stack, so I imagine it is the AI deciding which unit to use. The Heir unit always goes first and always gets away. You are right that it is almost completely destroyed each attack, and sometimes it does zero damage, but even if it gets off a single point, that is one less point my other units have to do. I only put the unit in the stack when I was attacking the Baron's territory because I thought it would be cool if Paul was with the army. I assumed that the unit would never get a chance to attack, since it was so low in power that all the rest of the units would need to be killed off first. Otherwise, I would never have bothered with the unit in the first place.

I only put the unit in the stack when I was attacking the Baron's territory because I thought it would be cool if Paul was with the army.

I am sure you put the unit in the stack because it gives all the other units +25% to their attack strength, not *just* because it would be cool. You can see the "Inspiration" promotion on the other units in the stack.

It is an interesting point that the AI never builds this unit. In 1.6.4 this unit is temporarily renamed as a BG UU "Kwisatz Haderach". In 1.6.5 it will become one of a line of four KH units which are built by projects. So, I will have to make sure that the projects get built by the AI.

The combat strength bonus, first strikes, and first strike immunity apply to all units in the stack.

Ok. Then this seems very strong to me. Playtest will tell.
Also, do you have a way to make sure that the benefits from multiples cannot stack?

Also: will giving the unit Medic AI (or stack defender AI) help the AI know to use them to accompany large stacks?

Where can we put this new tech?

I will think about this when I have the tree in front of me.

Having a building also is fine.
My suggestion for one UB is the Missionaria Protectiva, as an early game (Faith) espionage generator. I could also see a Bene Gesserit Academy as a UB university replacement - I think we used to have something like that?

That is kind of the point. Once the BG get here, they should be unstoppable, or at least that one stack should be unstoppable.
Powerful is one thing, unstoppable is another. The game tends to devolve into super-stacks, so you in some sense having a 50% increase in the entire size of your military. Not even the Avatar units in FFH are that powerful, and they cost thousands of hammers.
We can playtest, of course.

I think we should be open to changing around the late game techs a bit.
I'm definitely open to this.

We have discussed two key effects of prana-bindu from the books: high strength and high speed. These seem to correspond to combat bonuses and first strikes. High speed can also correspond to withdraw promotions, "running away" at high speed. I can add the existing withdraw promotions to the list teachable by Sayyadinas.

This seems reasonable.

The main goal of the GP tech is to enable the GP building. (We need to rename one of these.)
Hmm. "Enforced stability" techname?

This is supposed to represent the stifling effect that choosing the golden path would have had on humanity, despite making them feel happy about it.
Right, and the idea was that it would allow super-cities that woudl still make it worthwhile gameplay wise.

While it didn't do a lot of damage, it would soften them up for a much stronger unit attack, thus almost ensuring victory in evenly matched battles.

I'm surprised, I would have thought the chances of it winning any battle rounds would be very low, given its low strength.

I am pretty sure the AI will always attack last with this unit because it has low strength
I'm not sure this is true. The AI normally atatcks first with the unit that has the highest probability of not dying from the fight. In other mods (FFH/FF), it will very often attack with lower strength high withdraw chance units first. I don't know if this required any particular AI changes, or is generic to BTS.

I'm not sure this is true. The AI normally atatcks first with the unit that has the highest probability of not dying from the fight. In other mods (FFH/FF), it will very often attack with lower strength high withdraw chance units first. I don't know if this required any particular AI changes, or is generic to BTS.

This has been my experience as well. The only time the cpu attacks me with a stronger unit first, is if it is a vehicle with a high withdraw chance. Otherwise they usually send in weaker units and then stronger ones. While defending, it appears to be the reverse. I haven't played enough to have a large sample size certainty though.

This has been my experience as well. The only time the cpu attacks me with a stronger unit first, is if it is a vehicle with a high withdraw chance. Otherwise they usually send in weaker units and then stronger ones. While defending, it appears to be the reverse

This seems the opposite of what I meant.

I normally observe that the AI's order of attack is:
1) High withdraw chance units
2) High strength units
3) Medium strength units
4) Low strength units.

You seem to be observing low-strength units *without* withdraw chances attacking before high-strength units?

I have not observed that.

To be honest, I am not sure. I can't remember ever being attacked by non vehicular units, and I think vehicular units all have a withdraw chance. Usually I am attacked by the small suspensor (mickey mouse looking), vehicles and then the larger tanks. Like I said before, I haven't played this out that much. Due to the difficulty with crossing the desert, I don't often get attacked by the cpu unless I am invading their territory and they attack a stack I have resting up after a battle. When I attack with a stack, the order usually ends up being high withdraw units, lower strength units, higher strength ones, and then ones with a general attached (unless it has high withdraw then it goes first).

Usually I am attacked by the small suspensor

I can imagine that the AI moves its naval units before it moves its land units. This does not suprprise me. I would be surprised though for a land stack to attack you with weak land units before stronger land units.

I can't remember ever being attacked by non vehicular units, and I think vehicular units all have a withdraw chance.

Vehicle units also have high base-strength. They are designed to attack units outside of cities.

I don't often get attacked by the cpu unless I am invading their territory and they attack a stack I have resting up after a battle

Try increasing the difficulty level, on higher difficulty levels the AI can be very aggressive at amphibious invasions, thanks to Cephalo's improved AI.

lower strength units, higher strength ones
I still find this strange. Perhaps they had different AI's or modifiers, or did collateral damaeg? Do you recall which low-strength units you mean here?

Yes. With Ix, the Cymeks always attacked first and then the Walkers. With Paul, my Atreides heir went first, then the vehicles (both units withdraw so that still fits your theory), then the Naib's chosen and then finally the Fedaykin. The one Fedaykin unit I had that had a Burseg, usually went somewhere in the middle where it was never killed. Perhaps the AI does this so that I won't be sacrificing a general as cannon fodder.

We are getting very "combat-orientated" again :(
IMO the BG are not "strong attackers", some others also said, that the voice should not be a "combat-action"...
of course the options of Civ are limited... but making them more firm in diplo or culture or even science made me more happy, then seeing them fighting like lions... just my opinion.

Greetz, HivedOne.

See the spies thread for non-combat BG feature discussion.