Some information about the current state of Bonuses and Bonus Placement. These are the current Dune Wars bonuses (yes, I know the correct plural is boni) :

Current Bonus List

Special Bonuses:
Groundwater, Spice

+1 Water Dew Plants:
Sword Grass, Burro Weed, Spiked Paintbush, Barrel Cactus, Creosote, Sand Verbena

+1 Hammer Bonuses:
Soostone, Crystal, Jasmium Quartz, Plaz, Ore, Nettele, Skein, Plasteel, Fogwood

+1 Commerce Bonuses:
Phibian Root, Sapho, Spice Dye, Burro Bush, Minerals, Shigawire, Nitrat, Smoke Tree

Other Bonuses:
Iridium, Refined Water(?), Refined Spice(?)

Imported Goods:
Imported Incense, Imported Silk, Imported Spices, Imported Nutrients (I think these take the place of Hit Singles, Hit Musicals, and Hit Movies, but not sure)

Dummy Graphical Bonuses:
Sandtrout, Little Maker

Civ4BonusInfos

As of Dune Wars 1.3, bonus placement was overhauled completely. The file defining bonus placement rules is Civ4BonusInfos.xml. There are currently only a few tags that are significant in determining placement for each bonus resource:

<iPlacementOrder>: The order in which bonuses are placed, starting at zero and counting up. All of the zero resources will be placed before proceed to those with iPlacementOrder 1 and so on. If after the higher priority bonuses are placed there are no available squares left, then none of the lower priority bonuses will actually appear.

<iTilesPer>: This determines the amount of each bonus to be placed proportionate to the total number of tiles on the map. So, an iTilesPer of 256 means "Place one of this resource for every 256 tiles on the map". Halving the number means double the number will be placed (provided there is available room) and doubling this number will half the number to be placed.

<bHills>,<bPeaks>,<bFlatlands>,<TerrainBooleans>,<FeatureBooleans>,<FeatureTerrainBooleans>: these all determine what terrains and features the bonus can appear on. Adding FeatureBoolean for Forest on its own seems to do nothing unless you add Grassland to FeatureTerrainBooleans to tell it that this bonus can appear on Grassland Forest.

<iGroupRange>,<iGroupRand>: These tags are used when you want to have little clumps of bonuses. iGroupRange = 1, iGroupRand = 25 means that for every one of this bonus placed there is a 25% change of another of the same bonus appearing within a 1 tile radius.

<iUnique>: Prevents bonus clumping. When set to 1, no two adjacent tiles may contain this resource. The downside is the available space on the map is used up more quickly. Note: there is a hardcoded game rule that means that two adjacent tiles cannot contain two different bonuses.

<bNormalize> This tag is meant to add extra of this bonus for starting positions. I've not seen it make a huge difference, perhaps because the map is already full of bonuses when it gets to this stage.

<iAIObjective> This makes the AI care more about this bonus. If that sounds vague then that's because it's all I know about it...

Bonus Placement

This is the bonus placement strategy in 1.3.1:

iPlacementOrder = 0, iTilesPer = 8
Groundwater - Due it's importance to growth this is much more common than everything else. iUnique, iAIObjective, bNormalize are set to 1 for this and this only at present. Since it has order 0, all groundwater is placed onto an empty map before any other bonus is placed. Other bonuses then have to fill in around it.

iPlacementOrder = 1, iTilesPer = 70
Sword Grass, Burro Weed, Spiked Paintbush, Barrel Cactus, Creosote, Sand Verbena -These have iGroupRange=1, iGroupRand=30 for clumping.

iPlacementOrder = 2, iTilesPer = 256
All +1 Hammer Bonuses and +1 Commerce Bonuses: iTilesPer has to be high otherwise the process doesn't get through all the resources before running out of space.

iPlacementOrder = 4, iTilesPer = 256
Iridium: There's no logically reason for this to have order = 4, but it does for now.

iPlacementOrder = 6, iTilesPer = 256
Sandtrout, Little Maker: These are cosmetic only.

I'm sharing all this info so that others can play with the tuning of the system. As I've said before, bonus placement is as key as the mapscript in determining the landscape of Arrakis.

One issue is that a bonus placement strategy for one mapscript can work poorly on another. We may face this issue with Cephalo's mapscript - but I believe you can code bonus placement into a script as well which may get around this issue.

Other Discussion Points

Other points/queries about bonuses:
1) Flavour-wise I think Shigawire and Fogwood should be replaced with something else as these plants are not native to Arrakis.
2) A lot of these bonuses are a complete mystery as to what they are. As Koma said in another thread, in order to decide prerequisites for units, we need to have a vague idea what these substances represent. Perhaps, we can use this thread to gather background info on these bonuses which can then go in the Pedia.
3) I think Burro Bush is too similar to Burro Weed and should be renamed to something more different.
4) Minerals is a bit generic - perhaps Gemstones or Diamonds would be appropriate. Also, what is Nitrat - is it a typo for Nitrate or Nitrates?

I think you need to include a design for the improvements that are buildable on them here.

So, there are 3 wells for groundwater, 3 mines for minerals, and then a bit of a mixup of farm replacements, pasture replacement, winery replacement for the others.
These probably need to be rationalized a little.

Maybe split them three ways;
i) late games ones (like sapho) that have significant tech requirements for visibility use the winery replacement, and have good tile yields
ii) early game ones that provide a global health bonus or happy bonus have low-medium tile yields, have these use the pasture replacement
iii) early game ones that do not provide a global bonus have a higher tile yield, or a tile yield that increases with tech more. Have these use the drip farm, and maybe replace the techs that currently give growth facility/greenhouse with a straight +1 tile bonus to the drip farm.

The 3 levels of dripfarm/growth complex/greenhouse currently don't do anything.

Since only bonuses and hills provide water, the -1 water from solar farms is irrelevant and should probly be removed.

I think you need to include a design for the improvements that are buildable on them here.

So, there are 3 wells for groundwater, 3 mines for minerals, and then a bit of a mixup of farm replacements, pasture replacement, winery replacement for the others.
These probably need to be rationalized a little.

I did rationalize them a little in June, but I agree that more can be done. The post did not go into much detail, but please see this link (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8174187&postcount=339) for what I was trying to accomplish. It is likely that adding "water for food" has changed a lot of the underlying assumptions.

In vanilla, you have improvements which operate on groups of resources:

* farm (food bonus: wheat, corn, rice)
* camp (happy/health mix: deer, furs, ivory)
* pasture (food/hammer bonus: horse!, cow, sheep, pig)
* mine (happy bonus: silver, gold, copper!, iron!, gems)
* winery
* plantation (happy/health mix: banana, etc)

The three with ! are the hidden ones. I have left off some late game ones like uranium; if we can get the early game right we can work on the late game ... later. Also the fishing boat applies to crab, clam and fish; this does not have a DW equivalent but the greenhouse and growth complex are supposed to compensate for that.

I tried for something similar without simply making a 1:1 replacement. But, in the same order as vanilla, DW has these improvements:

* Drip Farm (food: Burro Weed, Sword Grass, Sand Verbena)
* Complex (happy/health: Fogwood, Phibian, Root, Burro Bush)
* Dew Collectors (food/hammers: Spiked Paintbrush, Creosote, Barrel Cactus)
* Mine (happy/hammer: Crystal!, Ore!, Soostone!, Minerals, Shigawire, Jasmium)
* Grove (happy/health: Smoke tree, Sapho)
* Soil enricher (happy/health: Nettele, Spice dye, Nitrat, Skein)

The dew collector now also affects Sand Verbena, Burro Weed, Sword Grass. I did not look back at the happy/health values after Deliverator added the dew collector, but if he did not change much, that is the current design.

very good idea to make this thread!

Currently there are some resources that can have *either* farms or dew collectors built on them, which is somewhat confusing.
Worse, on some of them the farms give the resource and bonuses (and growth complex is better than drip farm, etc.) and on others the farms don't.

I think before redesigning these you probably need to finalize the list of resources; I know there was pressure from some people to remove some of the resources that are in the Dune universe but wouldn't really be found on Arrakis (Shiggawire, fogwood etc.)

Once you have a final list of resources, you can rationalize which improvements go with which, and what the tile yields are, and which techs provide an upgraded version or a tile yield bonus.

Currently there are some resources that can have *either* farms or dew collectors built on them, which is somewhat confusing.

Yes, this can be seen from my list; Sand Verbena, Burro Weed, Sword Grass are added to dew collector with a different effect from drip farming. This is the only change from the rationalized set I had before. Apart from this one double effect, you seem to feel the system is irrational. Do you agree that the design matches fairly well with vanilla if you remove these three doubles? The total number of health, happiness, hammer and commerce bonuses is very similar to vanilla.

I think before redesigning these you probably need to finalize the list of resources; I know there was pressure from some people to remove some of the resources that are in the Dune universe but wouldn't really be found on Arrakis (Shiggawire, fogwood etc.)

When keldath created the original set of resources, he went through the Dune wiki page, which is equivalent to the appendix in the original Dune book, and picked out every single plant name listed. It is true that some of these are non-native to Arrakis. As it is, due to removal of the ocean bonuses like fish, crab, clam we have slightly fewer resources than vanilla.

Please suggest new names. Otherwise the best we can do is to keep the ones we have. At least they make the game "sound" like Dune, even if it contradicts some of the details of the appendix. I tried searching for generic desert plant names but I wasn't able to get many.

I have no problem with the resources you have, or with the basic design. They work well.

The main thing I think needs to be rationalized are the tile yields. I'm fine with groundwater being much larger, though I'd consider giving it a +1 base water yield (and 1 less from the wells), as some of it will likely bubble to the surface in springs and oases and shallow wells even without significant improvements.

But I'd make the others more roughly equal in value.

If burrow weed, sword grass and sand verbena are going to get drip farms that upgrade to growth complex that upgrades to greenhouses, and mines that can be upgraded, why not some increased yields from Complex or Dew Collectors?
Why not merge together grove and soil enricher - it also feels weird for a soil enricher to be giving hammer bonuses, from Skein and the like (what is skein anyway?).

A resource that gives a health or happy bonus should have lower tile yields than one that just gives tile bonus, but both should be upgradable over the course of the game, either through upgrades or just bonuses from new techs (like windtraps get).

Otherwise, civs that start near one type of resource have a big advantage over civs that start near the other.

I think there needs to be a bit more consideration of what is "health" now, and what resources and buildings should give it.

In particular, I think things like the city wind trap and city quanat should give a +water income rather than health, so that you can keep a city growing a little more even without bonus resources by investing in infrastructure.
You might even want to eliminate health entirely, and just have city growth based on water supplies.
What does health really accomplish in this mod? Do we really think that having enough doctors or not is an important determinant of growth in this future world?
Health makes sense for human history, where sanitation and disease *was* a big determinant, but in the far future?

Obviously this would need a lot of building elimination or tweaking, but I think this is a good thing, the mod is a little cluttered with buildings.

I think the approach of getting the bonuses settled and the rethinking/redesigning the improvements based on these, suggested by Ahriman, makes a lot of sense. We don't have to copy the vanilla structure providing we can tick all the boxes in terms of growth, economy and fun.

I think we should come up with replacements for Fogwood, Burro Bush, Minerals and Shigawire. They don't have to be plants remember, they can animals/birds or minerals. So we need one new +1 Hammer bonus and three +1 Commerce bonuses. Can't be too hard to think up something...

Once we have those in place we can redesign improvements, asking 'do we need this?' and 'what purpose does this serve?' with each one.

Renaming stuff is certainly fine, and zero impact on the system. I found that it wasn't really possible to design improvements and bonuses separately when I did the current system; I grouped together 3-4 bonuses under one improvement and then for that "family", I gave them related benefits.

I think it certainly requires some kind of a spreadsheet to track, and I also found it very helpful to write the related xml and try it out locally.

Can anybody suggest any names at all?

I'll have a think about the bonus names - it would be good to get down a little description of what each bonus is too - even if we have to invent one.

Here's a run down of the bonuses in patch 1.3.4 (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?rjndnjgdynt). My general aim has been to get bonuses that are actually defined and have varied functions in the game, whilst be as true to the books as possible.

You'll have to check the pedia for now to see all the details of the bonus and improvements. I'll flesh out the details here when I have a chance.

Water Bonuses

There are now 3 varieties of Groundwater as suggested by Ahriman, Groundwater (Meagre), Groundwater, Groudwater (Plentiful), with -2, -1 and 0 water modifiers respectively to the existing groundwater. Groundwater now produces +1 water unimproved. There is a new Cloud bonus that is revealed with Way of Liet. It gives +2 water from Wind Traps and only appears on Hills. I'd like this bonus to be more integrated into Terraforming so that more appears as you go on. In Children of Dune Jesicca returns to Arrakis and comments on the clouds that now appear in the sky. Screenshot to follow.

Dew Plants

Six is a lot, but they are good for desert flavour.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=221162&stc=1&d=1247728842

Barrel Cactus - Barrel Cactus is approximately barrel-shaped, with numerous, pronounced ribs and long yellow spines. It is the last of the cacti to bloom in the calendar year. When it does bloom, a bright orange flower appears. The flower yields to a yellow small pineapple-shaped fruit.

Creosote Bush - Creosote Bush is a form of shrub native to Arrakis. It requires very little water, and is capable of digging deep into sand dunes to find it. It has shallow roots to catch rain, it also has bad odour to repel animals and poison at the base of the trunk. The bush also has shiny leaves that catch and hold water. When the Fremen of Arrakis need to perform delicate work with their hands, they often remove the gloves from their stillsuits and rub their hands with leaves from the creosote bush. This prevents perspiration through the hands.

Spiked Paintbush - Spiked Paintbush is a flowering plant with numerous large thorns. The flowers of the Spiked Paintbush are edible and sweet, and are believed by the Fremen to have many medicinal qualities.

Sand Verbena - Sand Verbena grows as a sand-hugging mat one to four inches tall and up to three feet wide. Because sticky glands cover the surface of the plant, sand grains adhere to flowers, stems, fruit, and leaves. The flowers of the Sand Verbena are bright pink in colour.

Sword Grass - Sword grass is a type of grass with blades that are sharp enough to cut human skin. This is because they contain many silica phytoliths, a hardening material in many plants. The sharp blades help to discourage herbivores from eating it. With care, dew may gathered from patches of Sword Grass.

Burro Weed - Burro Weed is a form of shrub, that thrives in the desert due to its shallow roots and glossy gray-green leaves.

Strategic Resources

The definition of stategic resources in vanilla goes: "Most of these resources are essential, as they allow you to create certain unit types or increase wonder production. They also add production value to your cities". The big problem in the 1.3.3 set is that too many of the resources have mystery definitions so it is hard to know their strategic value. Also, strategic resources shouldn't IMO be finished produce like Plasteel and Plaz - you don't mine for steel and the vanilla strat resources as more like this. According to the Jacurutu guys, "I believe basalt is the only type of rock mentioned so quartz is a possibility. But nothing but spice is worth mining for." so we've pretty much got to fictionalise to get minerals with strategic value on Arrakis. I've tried to come up with a plausible and interesting list.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=221161&stc=1&d=1247727892

Stravidium - Stravidium is used in the creation of Plasteel, an extremely tough form of steel. Making Plasteel involves weaving Stravidium fibers into the crystal structure.

Jasmium Quartz - Sheets of Jasmium Quartz can processed to make Metaglass by high-temperature gas infusion. Metaglass is noted for its extreme tensile strength and capacity as a selective radiation filter.

Diamonds - Diamond is an arrangement of carbon atoms in a crystal structure called a diamond lattice. It has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any known material available in bulk. Diamond also has remarkable optical characteristics. The major industrial application of Diamond is cutting tools.

Borax - Borax is most commonly found in the form of a white powder consisting of soft colorless crystals that dissolve easily in water. It has a wide variety of uses and is used in the manufacture of detergents, cosmetics, enamel glazes, fire retardant surfaces, insecticides and as a flux in metallurgy.

Sulfur - Sulfur in its native form is a yellow crystalline solid. Derivatives of sulfur are used in the manufacture of fertilizer, wastewater processing, and mineral extraction. They are also used as preservatives for dried fruit.

Nitrates - A Nitrate is a salt of nitric acid. It can be used in the manufacture of artificial fertilizers and explosives.

Iron Ore, Crystal - Don't have summaries yet, but can create later.

Commerce and Trade Goods

Hunting Resources

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=221160&stc=1&d=1247728291

Desert Hawks - The Desert Hawks of Arrakis are hunted for their meat and for their feathers which are used for decoration. It is said that Paul Muad'Dib, upon witnessing the emergence of a young desert hawk from its shell, muttered the words: "Kull Wahad!" - an exclamation that means "I am profoundly stirred!".

Desert Hare - A Desert Hare is a leporid found and bred on the planet Arrakis during the ecological transformation of that planet by Planetologist Pardot Kynes. This hare would generally live among the rocks, thriving on small plants. The predators to this animal are generally Desert Owls and Desert Hawks, but they are also hunted by humans for their meat.

Insect Produce

The insect idea came from the etching resin and spice honey which are both in the books. Baradye pistols are mentioned in the books, but I have invented the fact that they are basically like cochineal-carmine dye.

He could still taste the morsel she had fed him--bird flesh and grain bound with spice honey and encased in a leaf.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=221158&stc=1&d=1247728291

Etching Resin - Wind etching, a method of sculpture, produces patterns of great delicacy and beauty. Many amoungst the Fremen are justly recognized as masters of the art. The process of wind-etching makes use of the resin secreted by the insect Laccifera Arctica. These insects live on the twigs of certain plants native to the northern near-polar regions of Arrakis and gather resin. This resin is collected and traded across the planet.

Spice Honey - Spice Honey is one of the staple foods of the Fremen, made by mixing honey and spice. The Fremen wrap the meat of birds or small mammals and grain in leaves and then coat the parcels in honey to sustain them during their long desert journeys.

Baradye - Baradye is a crimson-colored dye obtained from the carminic acid produced by a variety of insect. This insect lives on the cactus commonly known as the Prickly Pear, feeding on its moisture and nutrients. The pulverised bodies of the insects are boiled and filtered to produce Baradye. Amongst other things, Baradye is used to lay down markers on the sand of Arrakis with Baradye Pistols.

Plantation Crops

Plantations are stepping stone to Pardot Kynes plan for changing Arrakis. I have made the new Desert Plantation tech a prerequisite for the Way of Liet.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=221159&stc=1&d=1247728659


Coffee - Coffee is a plant that was part of the terraforming project that began on the planet Arrakis during the time of Pardot Kynes. Coffee, the hot beverage prepared from the roasted seeds of the plant, is a popular drink among the Fremen, who usually lace it with the spice melange.

Cotton - Cotton is a soft fiber that grows around the seeds of the cotton plant. The fiber was most often spun into thread and used to make a soft, breathable textile, which was a popular natural-fiber cloth in the days of the Imperium. It was one of the shrubs cultivated in the ecological transformation of the planet Arrakis under Planetologist Pardot Kynes.

Incense - The incense bush is a shrub that was planted on the planet Arrakis during the ecological transformation program begun by Pardot Kynes. Incense plays an important role in the religious rites of Arrakis.

Cereal - Cereals, such as Wheat, were introduced to Arrakis as a terraforming agent and staple food during Planetologist Pardot Kynes' ecological experiments.

There is also a new goody hut graphic using the bedouin meeting from Warlords:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=221157&stc=1&d=1247729345

Tech Tree Changes

I've changed the early tech tree around a bit to accomodate these resources.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=221156&stc=1&d=1247729293

There is some tidy up and refinement still to do, but I thought I'd put it up now to get some feedback. I can then do a polishing sweep based on feedback.

IMPORTED GOODS AND HOUSE ECAZ

Here are some entries from the appendix of Dune.

ECAZ: fourth planet of Alpha Centauri B; the sculptors' paradise, so called because it is the home of fogwood, the plant growth capable of being shaped in situ solely by the power of human thought.

SAPHO: high-energy liquid extracted from barrier roots of Ecaz. Commonly used by Mentats who claim it amplifies mental powers. Users develop deep ruby stains on mouth and lips

SEMUTA: the second narcotic derivative (by crystal extraction) from burned residue of elacca wood. The effect (described as timeless, sustained ecstasy) is elicited by certain atonal vibrations referred to as semuta music.

ELACCA DRUG: narcotic formed by burning blood-grained elacca wood of Ecaz. Its effect is to remove most of the will to self-preservation. Druggee skin shows a characteristic carrot color./ Commonly used to prepare slave gladiators for the ring.

VERITE: one of the Ecaz will-destroying narcotics. It renders a person incapable of falsehood.

Many of the substances in the appendices are not native to Arrakis but come from offworld. A lot of these are really interesting and would still be good to keep in the game. My idea is that we should use these resources instead of the generic Imported Nutrients, Imported Silk that we currently have. I think it would be interesting for every faction to have a unique spaceport, which produces bonuses unique to them (like Hollywood in vanilla or the FFH2 palaces which produce different mana types). This way, once Space Ports is research, the Atreides can start receiving Caladan produce, the Harkonnen can receive Inkvine from Geidi Prime and so on. These bonuses could form prerequisites for units, such that if you can trade for a unit of the imported substance you can build a new type of unit if you have the tech. This would give trade more and diverse strategic importance.

Looking at the examples given above it also gave me the idea for House Ecaz. You don't have to read too much between the lines to assume that the inhabitants of Ecaz are the drug barons of the Duniverse. You go to the Ixians for your machines, the Tleilaxu for your genetic engineering and to Ecaz for your narcotics. If we create them as a faction then their spaceport can produce twice as many imported goods as the other factions, giving them a higher happy cap, more trade opportunities and potentially access to certain units. For example, if you trade with Ecaz and obtain Sapho Juice then you can build Mentat units.

wow,
remarkable work deliverator.

The new and changed improvements are:

Hunting Camp - built on Desert Hawks and Desert Hares
Insect Farm - built on Spice Honey, Baradye, Etching Resin
Desert Plantation - built on Coffee, Cotton, Incense and Cereal. (I haven't yet but I think I'll make this -1 water)
Qanat - replaces Drip Farming creates +1 water on any irrigated tile
Qanat System has been renamed to Aquabore

All strategic resources are exploited by the Mine improvements.

Complex, Growth Facility and Greenhouse are removed/replaced. I thought they were just too vague and boring.

I want to change Iridium to Uranium or Plutonium since Iridium is a tough metal (covered by Stravidium & Iron Ore -> Plasteel) and I think we need a radioactive resource for atomics. Probably I'm going to change to graphic to orange colour and glow to distinguish it from Crystal.

Since the Dew Plants are all quite similar, we can probably stretch to another 2 strategic resources and another 2 commerce/other resources. Sulphur, Borax and Nitrates have a bit of overlap usage-wise - if people have suggestions I'm happy to change them or add more. It would perhaps be good to have some strategic resources that are not mined but have some other improvement.

I imagine the worm cycle resources - Little Maker and Sandtrout - unchanged in 1.3.4 will effectively be strategic resources since they will be needed to make Revered Mothers, etc.

I think in the follow-up patch, I'll rename Desert Hunting to Desert Survival and put Dew Collectors on there. Then I'll put a new Desert Fauna tech (for Hawks, Hares and Hunting Camps) with the prereq of Desert Insects and something else.

Civilization Unique Bonus Resources (Imported Goods)

Here's a fleshing out of the Imported Goods idea.

These will be available with UBs Atreides Spaceport, Harkonnen Spaceport, etc. available at the Space Ports tech (with the exceptions of the Fremen factions and the Guild).

ATREIDES: (Either of... )
Caladanian Wine - The Southern Continent of Caladan is home to many fine Caladanian wines that are traded throughout the Empire.
Pundi Rice – A mutated rice whose grains, high in natural sugar, achieve lengths up to four centimeters; chief export of Caladan.

HARKONNEN:
Inkvine - Creeping plant native to Giedi Prime and frequently used as a whip in its slave pens. Victims are marked by beet-colored tattoos that cause residual pain for many years.

TLEILAXU:
Sligs - One of the earliest successes of Tleilaxu genetic engineering, the slig is a hybrid livestock animal — a cross between a large slug and a Terran pig. The meat has been called 'The sweetest meat this side of heaven.' and marinated slig medallions in rich Caladan wine sauces are considered a prime delicacy. Despite being the producers of sligs, the Tleilaxu themselves do not consume the animals.

CORRINO:
Shigawire – Metallic extrusion of a ground vine (Narvi narviium) grown only on Salusa Secundus and III Delta Kaising. It is noted for extreme tensile strength and used as a recording medium (among other things).

IX:
Thinking Machines - Intelligent and sentient machines.

BENE GESSERIT:
Meta-Cyanide - A lethal and rapid-acting poison, used on the gom jabbar needle
in the Bene Gesserit death-alternative test of human awareness.

FENRING:
Kindjal - A Kindjal is a large knife with a slightly curved double-blade approximately 20cm long. Many family members of Great Houses were tought how to wield this weapon during the days of the Faufreluches.

FREMEN/SIETCH-TABR:
Stillsuits – Body-enclosing garments of Fremen design which perform the functions of heat dissipation and filtering of bodily wastes, as well as retaining and reclaiming moisture.
There can be a Stillsuit Maker UB for these civs, available with the Stillsuits tech, that produces the Stillsuit resource.

ORDOS:
They are made up by Westwood, so we'll have to invent something. They come from an ice planet so that could shape the choice. Perhaps we could use this from the Appendix, suitable for a financial, profit-driven house?
Opafire - one of the rare opaline jewels of Hagal.

SPACING GUILD:
Nothing - Eventually I hope we can have them making money from shipping goods and units by doing that funky fold-space thing. That would be most appropriate.

I'd like to add House Ecaz and they could have 3 or 4 imported goods as part of their unique faction ability.

The idea is that some of these will have a happy benefit while others will be purely strategic, enabling the production of certain units.

New Resources are looking great. :goodjob:

The only ones I don't like are the cotton based models (cresote bush, sand verbena, ...)
They surely can survive in a dutch greenhouse but on Arrakis with storm speeds up to 350mph? Make them less fragile, maybe by reducing their height or making them more bulky towards the bottom.

In the bonus XML, watch out for the bArea flag. If that is set to a one it means that a bonus is only supposed to be initially placed on one continent. By default, most luxury resources and health resources are set to 1. The intended effect of this is to promote trade rather than self sufficiency.

I'm not sure if this functionality make sense on Dune however. Plus, you have the imported goods to promote trade.

The only ones I don't like are the cotton based models (cresote bush, sand verbena, ...) They surely can survive in a dutch greenhouse but on Arrakis with storm speeds up to 350mph? Make them less fragile, maybe by reducing their height or making them more bulky towards the bottom.

Yeah, I can do something better for them no doubt. I had so many new resources to make/find that a few were just quick and easy reskins.

In the bonus XML, watch out for the bArea flag.

Yeah, know about that one. I'm fairly sure I've set it to zero everywhere.

Looks great. I'd have desert hares and hawks only spawn on desert (ie ocean) tiles. Does food source mean they provide water?

And do hawks really make sense as a food source?

Not sure if this is better off in the 1.3 feedback thread, but it probably fits better here. I have a locally improved version of civchecker which finds unreferenced files. It generates a lot of noise so I do not think I will release it. But, it finds a lot of unreferenced files among what you added in 1.3.4. This may be due to missing fields in your artdefines_bonus.xml.

For example, compare your ART_DEF_MARBLE against vanilla. In yours, there is no kfm file reference; in theirs, they define it. As a result, the kfm file in art/terrain/bonus/sulphur is unreferenced. Therefore the kf files and freezeNNNN.nif files are also unreferenced.

I guess I am pointing out that you may have a bunch of empty kfm fields in your artdefines; not sure if this is on purpose or not.

Looks great. I'd have desert hares and hawks only spawn on desert (ie ocean) tiles. Does food source mean they provide water?

Food source means some hammer bonus. My rationale is that good food sources mean
faster, stronger workers. Part of the decision we made in moving to water instead of food is that food has to be much more abstract, but I think it's worth it overall.

And do hawks really make sense as a food source?

I know bird meat could mean any sort of bird, but the Fremen being the ultra-pragmatists that they are I'm sure they wouldn't be averse to eating some hawk meat. The only two birds I can find in the original book are hawks and eagles. Eating eagle would probably feel just as strange. Plus hawks are cooler looking than Desert Chicken or whatever the alternatives are...

For example, compare your ART_DEF_MARBLE against vanilla. In yours, there is no kfm file reference; in theirs, they define it. As a result, the kfm file in art/terrain/bonus/sulphur is unreferenced. Therefore the kf files and freezeNNNN.nif files are also unreferenced.

I guess I am pointing out that you may have a bunch of empty kfm fields in your artdefines; not sure if this is on purpose or not.

This is intentional. Not specifying the KFM tag simply means that I don't want the bonus to be animated, i.e. it will be static on the map. I'm sure a lot of these bonuses are going to be refined and replaced in time, and a lot of the currently static ones get animations. It may be slightly better to keep the unreferenced KFMs/KFs - in case we want to use them, but I'm easy if you want to delete them to keep things clean. I have copies of everything if I do need them.

Installed the patch. Lots of fun! This has a ton of flavor and the art is great.

Loving the , though the strategic resource requirements are pretty tough (maybe some of them should be builds 50% faster with X and have the unit cost twice as much, rather than be requires resource X?) Should I really be unable to build bladesmen because I don't have any iron ore? But I'm able to produce infantry with guns?

In particular, hover transports need to not require a strategic resource! What if you don't start on an archipelago with any sulphur? You're screwed, because you can never get a hover transport to let you expand to one that does.

Couple of things:
didn't see any hawks or insects spawn anywhere.
Camp and insect farm seem to be buildable anywhere (as in, without the bonus resource) but they do nothing.

Oh, and the no-roads needed for resource connection no longer works on the terraformed grasslands and plains; resources on these tiles give "requires route" message.

It seems like the resource is still connected, so it may just be the message.

Cottages are no longer buildable on grasslands (but solar farms are? if anything it should be the opposite; solar farms less effective once you start getting cloud cover and precipitation, but you are more likely to have towns that grow).

In particular, hover transports need to not require a strategic resource! What if you don't start on an archipelago with any sulphur? You're screwed, because you can never get a hover transport to let you expand to one that does.

Use a scout thopter? It is a little unexpected for an early game unit, but it can transport settlers and workers.

I have a similar experience with crystal and the maula mortar. I was unable to build any useful city attack units until I found an island at some distance, which has crystal.

Ah, didn't realize scout thoptor could transport... but still. Not really worth building a city if you can't transport any combat units to defend it.

Also, the resources on grasslands; if I had access before, I don't seem to lose it when it turns grasslands (or maybe I just have another nitrates resource somewhere, which I was using as my benchmark). But I had a sulfur resource spawn (at last!) on a mine tile on that had already turned to grassland, and it had the unconnected message and did not conntect.

I'd also suggest that the terraforming in general comes too early in the tech tree given the current rapid transformation, but maybe that will be ok if terraforming takes more time.

The terraforming buildings don't change desert (ie land-desert, not ocean desert wastes or deep desert).

Ah, didn't realize scout thoptor could transport... but still. Not really worth building a city if you can't transport any combat units to defend it.

Scout thopter can transport any foot units (infantry, melee too), in fact it's a cheap transport without any requirements. Another workaround would be building desert raiders. They only need spice and can move into deep desert.

I have a similar experience with crystal and the maula mortar. I was unable to build any useful city attack units until I found an island at some distance, which has crystal.

Bladesman and Elite Bladesman ignores city shields. You only need a maula mortar when you want to attack cities with infantry.

Edit:

Loving the , though the strategic resource requirements are pretty tough

Tough resource requirements aren't units' faults. Strategic resources are messed up. Crystal for example is aluminum, not iron. Soostone is marble, not horses. The normalizer for bonus placement (responsible for making sure you always have iron/bronze and horses next to your starting location in vanilla civ4) doesn't work because we have strategic resources that civ4 doesn't recognize as (early) strategic resources.

The inability to build improvements on grassland is particularly annoying after storms take out the improvements on them; you can't rebuild anything.

Bladesman and Elite Bladesman ignores city shields. You only need a maula mortar when you want to attack cities with infantry.

Thanks! Let us all drag each other up the learning curve.

Ah, didn't realize scout thoptor could transport... but still. Not really worth building a city if you can't transport any combat units to defend it.

I did not give a complete list. I do not think there is any display in the pedia about which units are transportable. You can look for SPECIALUNIT_PEOPLE in the unitinfos xml file. Oh wait, you don't want to look in xml files. It seems that all the foot units, including for example missile trooper, bladesman, and others can all go into the scout thopter.

The inability to build improvements on grassland is particularly annoying after storms take out the improvements on them; you can't rebuild anything.

Good find. All the improvements need to have terra_grass and terra_plains added as terrainbooleans.

How are you supposed to counter the Ordos saboteur? Hidden Nationality is one thing, but this is also invisible! Not even infiltrators can detect invisible units, so this guy is just running around my empire killing off my workers.

This is intentional. Not specifying the KFM tag simply means that I don't want the bonus to be animated, i.e. it will be static on the map.

OK, as long as there is a reason. I'm not sure why you want to turn off animations that exist in vanilla, but it doesn't matter that much.

It may be slightly better to keep the unreferenced KFMs/KFs - in case we want to use them, but I'm easy if you want to delete them to keep things clean. I have copies of everything if I do need them.

Cleaning stuff *out* of the release is actually tricky, it cannot be done with a patch. When we decide to make 1.4 with a new fpk file, it may be worthwhile to clean out unused things. I had sent a list of unused directories and files in my release note for 1.3.3; now there are many more unused directories. I can rerun civchecker to find unused directories when stuff gets a little more stable.

OK guys, let's try to use the 1.3 playtest thread also. I'd rather have a few bonus related comments over there, instead of a bunch of miscellanous comments here. That way we can go through the 1.3 thread to make a "fix list", rather than rereading the whole subforum.

In particular, hover transports need to not require a strategic resource! What if you don't start on an archipelago with any sulphur? You're screwed, because you can never get a hover transport to let you expand to one that does.

Just so everyone is aware, I have created the new strategic resources, but I have not gone through and reviewed what resources are required for each unit. If there is anything illogical or annoying about them, that is why. We can do this in the fixer upper patch.

deliverator,
if someone says he "hates" these,
tell me and ill kick they're ass :)

If there is anything illogical or annoying about them, that is why. We can do this in the fixer upper patch.

Fair enough. One definite thing; desert hawks seems to be using the Coal feedins, and consequently shows up in a lot of weird places.

Also: Core Mine (mine level 3) seems to be giving lower tile bonus than deep mine (mine level 2)?
(When on a regular hill tile, not on a bonus resource)

deliverator, if someone says he "hates" these, tell me and ill kick they're ass

Well, I did go slightly out on a limb with these, so I'm pleased that they've been well received and the ass-kicking won't be required! :)

I'll look to resolve any issues listed in this thread and add the imported goods in my next patch.

(EDIT: obsolete, see this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8273297&postcount=53) instead)

Who knew that Desert Hawks were a vital component in building tanks?

I wrote a script to crossreference the required techs and bonuses for each unit. I hope you have Microsoft Excel available, so you can see my results. I am not sure exactly what to conclude from the sheet, but it seems like we should (re?) design the required bonuses for each unit more carefully. I have sorted by the highest tech level (iGridX in the xml) so you can see which are early game units and which are late game units. Unfortunately the script did not handle xml comments, and koma13 has commented out a number of units; so there are some errors due to this. I tried to catch them manually.

Sulphur is revealed at tech level 3; Iron Ore and Crystal are revealed at tech level 4.

Thanks for this. david. I'll take a look and try and think up some sort of logic between the strategic resources and units.

Of course, the great bonus XML renaming would help with this a bit. Are you still intending to do that after keldath's patch?

Edit: Actually, David could you produce the same spreadsheet with the Unit Class and perhaps the Strength and Movement on there too? I'm thinking it makes sense to assign certain strat resources to certain unit classes, and the other numbers help with seeing at a glace what the better units are.

Of course, the great bonus XML renaming would help with this a bit. Are you still intending to do that after keldath's patch?

Yes, I plan to start a patch in 10 hours and finish in about 30.

Edit: Actually, David could you produce the same spreadsheet with the Unit Class and perhaps the Strength and Movement on there too?

It is pretty handy, isn't it. I did that in the text editor, mostly, so it isn't extensible, but I have a script from a few weeks ago I used for bonuses. I will try to put up both sheets in about 15 hours.

(Why do I say hours? We are all in different timezones; "tonight my time" requires too much interpretation.)

Some comments on health. In vanilla archipelago, it is pretty easy to get up to 8 health at all cities in the early game. I can usually find 1-2 coast food bonuses and a harbor (say, +2 or +4), 1-2 farm bonuses and a granary (another +2 or +4), 1 pasture bonus (+1), plus the starting value from game difficulty (+2 for Noble). So 8 is not hard, even before getting the midgame buildings like plantation, grocer, market.

In DW, in a couple of games I played, there is one health bonus nearby, and there is no building to amplify it. So my health gets up to a whopping 3: 2 from game difficulty and one from the bonus. If I am lucky, I can get one more health from my second city. Until I get a nutrient convoy, I have serious health issues, like -5 in each city.

You may ask, "So what?" That is actually a good question. I have enough water and windtraps that I have a water income of 16 by pretty early, which supports a population of 5-6 with the health penalty. Still in the early game, I can get a water income of 20 which supports a population of 8 at -4 health. It "feels" a lot different than vanilla; I feel bad whenever I have a city with significant unhealth. Maybe I should just ignore it.

Having this health issue makes me think twice about Sand Metal, which gives +1 unhealth in all cities, and also about the Refinery, which gives an additional +1 unhealth in its city.

I don't like the fact that health is limiting in this way. It is accidental not intentional.

I did actually think about health when designing these resources. Here's a bit from the text file where I was working things out:

Dew Resources(6) (4 health, 2 happy): Sword Grass (+1 health), Burro Weed (+1 happy), Spiked Paintbush (+1 health), Barrel Cactus (+1 health), Creosote Bush (+1 health), Sand Verbena (+1 happy)

Commerce Resources(9):
(4 health, 5 happy)
Incense (+1 happy) (Plantation), Coffee (+1 happy) (Plantation), Cereal (+1 health) (Plantation), Cotton (+1 happy) (Plantation), Etching Resin (+1 happy) (Insect Farm), Spice Honey (+1 health) (Insect Farm), Baradye (+1 happy) (Insect Farm), Desert Hawks (+1 health) (Hunting Camp), Desert Hares (+1 health) (Hunting Camp)

So I think the main issue is that we don't have the amplifying buildings like harbour and granary sorted.

Here's what I suggest:
1) Give the Groundwater bonuses +1 health.
2) Make the Water Cache amplify the health bonus from the Groundwater Bonuses, Sword Grass, Spiked Paintbush, Barrel Cactus, Creosote Bush
3) Make a new building called Stores (or something) that amplifies the bonus from Cereal, Spice Honey, Desert Hawks, Desert Hares

That should help ease things - then we need to make sure that other health buildings become available at appropriate stages of the tech tree.

If we find that there is too much water available or that health is still not right then we can revisit.

I am going to do a more detailed analysis of bonus placement. Once we have determined what are going to be the key strategic bonuses early, mid and late game, we'll need to factor that in to bonus placement as well.

I did actually think about health when designing these resources.

When I did the first reorganization of this, I also took into account the amplifying buildings. For each bonus, there are five checkpoints: (a) what tech tier makes it appear, (b) what is the initial benefit from just working it, (c) what is the additional tech tier and benefit from an improvement, (d) what is the early building tech tier and benefit (granary, harbor, forge), (e) what is the late building tech tier and benefit (market, grocer).

So you can chart how many health and happiness benefits are possible as you progress up the tech tree.

Then the second question is, how many of these are available on the map; I have some python which counts this up and reports it. I didn't update the python for your reorganization and I no longer have the variant which ran on vanilla (revdcm vanilla) but some method of counting them on the map may be helpful.

Here's what I suggest:
1) Give the Groundwater bonuses +1 health.
2) Make the Water Cache amplify the health bonus from the Groundwater Bonuses, Sword Grass, Spiked Paintbush, Barrel Cactus, Creosote Bush
3) Make a new building called Stores (or something) that amplifies the bonus from Cereal, Spice Honey, Desert Hawks, Desert Hares

There are three different size groundwater bonuses. Does that give +3, one each from small medium and large? I am still not a fan of three different ones.

Agree on the other points, this is the granary and harbor equivalents.

I like the 3 sizes, creates a little more variation.

I see no reason for +health from groundwater at all, they already give big enough bonuses. Definitely not +1 health for each of the different resources.

There are a lot of buildings that need to be tweaked or culled IMO. Many are also ridiculously cost-ineffective; some high level buildings that are like 300 hammers for a +15% gold bonus?

I think there are too many buildings that provide happiness bonuses. The shrine of the worm in particular is far too easy for often a +4 happy bonus.
If you want this building, why not tweak it so that its an alternative cult to the established religions, and so gives +1 unhappy for each religion present in the city.

Keldath asked:

-why is there so much resources on the map - mainly ground water

Wells are meant to be the primary water source so I've set it up so that wherever you start you should not be too far away from Groundwater. With Windtraps, Dew Collectors and Qanats (what used to be Drip Farms) improvements it may be that you can get reasonable growth without access to Groundwater in which case we can thin it out a bit to make room for other resources.

We need the map to be pretty full of resources, particularly if many units have strategic resouce requirements.

The way BonusInfos is set up now means that everything is relative to the total number of available squares. I'm going to simplify the explanation in the OP when I update it to say roughly x% of the bonuses will be Groundwater, x% with be Iron Ore and so on. That may make it easier for people to suggest adjustments.

There are three different size groundwater bonuses. Does that give +3, one each from small medium and large? I am still not a fan of three different ones.

I was suggesting +1 on each of the three, not +3 health on the Plentiful one. Would you like it more if we had three different names and graphics for the three resources? I'm a bit undecided myself...

The text inside the spoiler may be useful for balancing improvements. It is based on the 1.3.5 bonus, improvement, and building xml files. It shows for each bonus, what is the base benefit, and any benefits given by (i)mprovements and (b)uildings. So, we can see for example that Desert Hares give one gold when worked, no additional benefit from having a Hunting Camp, and one additional health from the Hierag building.


Groundwater (Meagre) : BONUS_AQUIFER_SMALL : 1 water
(i) Shallow Well : 2 water, 1 gold
(i) Deep Well : 4 water, 1 gold
(i) Aquabore : 6 water, 1 gold
Groundwater : BONUS_AQUIFER : 1 water
(i) Shallow Well : 3 water, 1 gold
(i) Deep Well : 5 water, 1 gold
(i) Aquabore : 7 water, 1 gold
Groundwater (Plentiful) : BONUS_AQUIFER_LARGE : 1 water
(i) Shallow Well : 4 water, 1 gold
(i) Deep Well : 6 water, 1 gold
(i) Aquabore : 8 water, 1 gold

Barrel Cactus : BONUS_DEER : 1 water
(i) Dew Collectors : 2 water, 1 gold
(b) Market : 1 happiness
(b) Commodity Center : 1 health
Creosote Bush : BONUS_PIG : 1 water
(i) Dew Collectors : 2 water, 1 gold
(b) Market : 1 happiness
(b) Commodity Center : 1 health
Spiked Paintbush : BONUS_CRAB : 1 water
(i) Dew Collectors : 2 water, 1 gold
(b) Space Port : 1 health
Sand Verbena : BONUS_WHEAT : 1 water
(i) Dew Collectors : 2 water, 1 gold
(b) Water Cache : 1 health
Sword Grass : BONUS_CLAM : 1 water
(i) Dew Collectors : 2 water, 1 gold
(b) Water Cache : 1 health
Burro Weed : BONUS_CORN : 1 water
(i) Dew Collectors : 2 water, 1 gold
(b) Water Cache : 1 health

Desert Hawks : BONUS_COAL : 1 gold
(i) Hunting Camp :
(b) Refinery : 1 happiness
(b) Factory : -2 health
(b) Industrial Park : -1 health
Desert Hares : BONUS_HARES : 1 gold
(i) Hunting Camp :
(b) Hierag : 1 health

Stravidium : BONUS_COPPER : 2 prod
(i) Mineral Extraction : 3 prod
(i) Deep Mine : 6 prod
(i) Core Mine : 7 prod
(i) Mining Station : 1 prod
Jasmium Quartz : BONUS_COW : 1 prod
(i) Mineral Extraction : 3 prod
(i) Deep Mine : 6 prod
(i) Core Mine : 7 prod
(b) Hierag : 1 health
(b) Commodity Center : 1 health
Diamonds : BONUS_WINE : 1 gold
(i) Mineral Extraction : 2 prod, 3 gold
(i) Deep Mine : 3 prod, 5 gold
(i) Core Mine : 2 prod, 7 gold
(b) Hierag : 1 health
Borax : BONUS_GOLD : 1 prod
(i) Mineral Extraction : 3 prod
(i) Deep Mine : 6 prod
(i) Core Mine : 7 prod
(i) Mining Station : 1 prod
(b) Refinery : 1 happiness
(b) Harvesting Factory : 1 happiness
Sulfur : BONUS_MARBLE : 1 prod
(i) Mineral Extraction : 3 prod
(i) Deep Mine : 6 prod
(i) Core Mine : 7 prod
Nitrates : BONUS_BANANA : 1 prod
(i) Mineral Extraction : 3 prod
(i) Deep Mine : 6 prod
(i) Core Mine : 7 prod
(b) Hierag : 1 health
Iron Ore : BONUS_STONE : 1 prod
(i) Mineral Extraction : 3 prod
(i) Deep Mine : 6 prod
(i) Core Mine : 7 prod
Crystal : BONUS_ALUMINUM : 1 prod
(i) Mineral Extraction : 3 prod
(i) Deep Mine : 6 prod
(i) Core Mine : 7 prod
Iridium : BONUS_URANIUM :
(i) Mining Station : -1 water, 1 prod, 3 gold

Etching Resin : BONUS_IVORY : 1 gold
(i) Insect Farm : 4 gold
(b) Space Port : 1 health
Spice Honey : BONUS_SILVER : 1 gold
(i) Insect Farm : 2 prod, 3 gold
(b) Refinery : 1 happiness
(b) Harvesting Factory : 1 happiness
Baradye : BONUS_HORSE : 1 gold
(i) Insect Farm : 1 prod, 4 gold
(b) Space Port : 1 health

Coffee : BONUS_COFFEE : 1 gold
(i) Desert Plantation : 1 prod, 4 gold
(b) Theater Hall : 1 happiness
Cotton : BONUS_GEMS : 1 gold
(i) Desert Plantation : 5 gold
(b) Refinery : 1 happiness
(b) Harvesting Factory : 1 happiness
Incense : BONUS_SHEEP : 1 gold
(i) Desert Plantation : 6 gold
(b) Commodity Center : 1 health
Cereal : BONUS_FUR : 1 gold
(i) Desert Plantation : 3 prod, 3 gold
(b) Market : 1 happiness

Spice : BONUS_SPICE : 1 gold
(i) Spice Harvester : 3 gold
(b) Factory : -2 health
(b) Industrial Park : -1 health
(b) Heighliner Port : 1 health
Clouds : BONUS_CLOUDS :
(i) Wind Trap : 4 water, 2 gold

Imported Incense : BONUS_INCENSE : 1 gold
(b) Zensunni Hall : 1 happiness
(b) Zenshiism Hall : 1 happiness
(b) Zensufism Hall : 1 happiness
(b) Mahayana Christianity Hall : 1 happiness
(b) Navachristianity Hall : 1 happiness
(b) Jewish Hall : 1 happiness
(b) Muadru Hall : 1 happiness
Imported Silk : BONUS_SILK : 1 gold
(b) Market : 1 happiness
Imported Spices : BONUS_SPICES : 1 gold
(b) Hierag : 1 health
Imported Nutrients : BONUS_MUSIC : 1 gold
(b) Communication Satellite : 1 happiness
Refined Water : BONUS_DRAMA : 1 gold
(b) Communication Satellite : 1 happiness
Refined Spice : BONUS_MOVIES : 1 prod
(b) Communication Satellite : 1 happiness


If there is some additional detail or organization which would be useful, please let me know; it is a pretty simple script (in the Tcl programming language.)

Thanks david, this looks really useful. There is a lot of messiness to sort out for sure.

BTW, it looks like Keldath misunderstood me about renaming the Mining tech to Surface Mining and the improvement has been renamed to Mineral Extraction. Surface Mine is a better name I think, can we change it back? Mineral Extraction is a completely different tech...

I've still no idea what Refined Water/Spice are. As things stand I think I'll remove them when I do the Imported Goods.

OK, I am starting to look at patch 1.3.8 and bonus refinements.

Thoughts and Plans:

+ A main focus will be sorting out strategic resources and their relationship with units. Some of the 1.3.4 bonuses are working better idea-wise than others right now:
Iron Ore -> Swords, Steel, etc -> later Melee Units, etc
Diamond -> Lasers, Lasguns, etc -> ranged infantry, etc
Crystal -> Flying/Hovering, etc -> later thopters, hovers, etc
Stravidium (with Iron Ore) -> Plasteel = Heavy Armour -> tanks, anything armoured, etc.
Nitrates -> Explosives -> Missiles, Artillery, etc.

... and then there's Jasmium Quartz (which makes Metaglass), Sulphur and Borax. I'm thinking of cutting the number to six, since I want them all to have clear distinct uses. I'm thinking of scrapping these last three and having a new sixth resource. Going to six instead of eight means that you will be much more likely to start close to one or two of them. Any ideas for the sixth. It needs to be associated with a type of unit that is not already covered by the 5 I've listed. There is also Iridium that I want to turn into Uranium so we could just use that as the sixth one for atomic reactor type uses.

+ Have Desert Hares and Desert Hawks appear only on the Desert Waste (coastal) tiles, this will free up more land space for the other bonuses in the mix.

+ Add Date Palms bonus and Palmery improvement at Desert Plantation for flavour and diversity. Might scrap one of the plantation bonuses to make room (perhaps Cotton?).

+ Sort out health by changing the Water Cache building and adding a new Food Processing building, that amplifies the health bonus from Cereal, Spice Honey, Desert Hawks, Desert Hares, etc.

+ Rebalance bonus placement so that strategic resources are frequent enough. Make Dew Plants less prevalent to free up space.

+ Implement Imported Goods idea as described earlier.

I'll also be sure to take everything posted in this thread so far into consideration.

Crystal -> Flying/Hovering, etc -> later thopters, hovers, etcSorry for getting slightly off-topic, but here's a small pet peeve of mine: Stop calling it "hover" - please call it "suspensor", because that's the name used for the Holtzmann suspensors. Hovering sounds pretty generic, like "hovercraft". Suspensor tanks, suspensor sleds etc. sound more fitting and would make it less generic.

Cheers, LT.

Ok, about names: I noticed Ahriman is always saying thoptor but everybody else is calling it thopter. Which one is correct?

EDIT: I like the idea of having uranium in game again. :goodjob:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ornithopter

Like the animated gif...

Never noticed my spelling :-)
Suspensors sounds good.

OK, I am starting to look at patch 1.3.8 and bonus refinements.

I agree, except for one point. The key thing about desert waste and deep desert is that it is hard to walk there. So I don't see how desert hares would survive. Without hares, hawks would have nothing to eat. I would prefer to keep the desert empty except for spice. Also, since spice and hawks/hares are both bonuses, it means that a hawk nest would prevent spice from appearing. To free up space, I notice that a lot of your plant resources come in clumps. This rarely happens in vanilla. When I see three squares of the same resource, I think, "What a waste, I wish I had two different resources instead of three the same". The second and third plot give a small water bonus and they *might* be useful for trade, but I'd much rather have a second health or happiness bonus in the BFC.

Sorry for getting slightly off-topic, but here's a small pet peeve of mine: Stop calling it "hover" - please call it "suspensor", because that's the name used for the Holtzmann suspensors.

Hm, those generators are the things that attract worms, go nuclear when hit by lasers, and cannot be used in the desert because of blowing sand and maintenance, right? I was thinking of units with fans underneath.

Hm, those generators are the things that attract worms, go nuclear when hit by lasers, and cannot be used in the desert because of blowing sand and maintenance, right? I was thinking of units with fans underneath.No. There's a so-called Holtzman effect in the Dune universe - think of it as something like "electromagnetism", a new force.

There are several technologies that harness the Holtzman effect:

Holtzman shields: Inpenetrable for everything at higher speeds than knifes/swords/punches (this causes vibrations in the air/sand etc. as well, so they attract worms). The shields also go nuclear if hit by lasguns.
Holtzman drives: FTL drives, uses the Holtzman effect to fold space, but only navigators can navigate folded space safely (and thinking machines, but they're banned).
Suspensors: Make things lighter than they are, essentially an anti-gravity device. Baron Harkonnen uses them to be able to move because he's so morbidly obese! :lol:
Glowglobes: Well, they glow and make light and float around.

So only shields have the worm and "kaboom!" problem. Suspensors don't have that, but they harness the same "physics" so to speak. And units with fans underneath would probably produce hilarious dust clouds - making "seeing" rather hard...!

Cheers, LT.

to free up space, I notice that a lot of your plant resources come in clumps. This rarely happens in vanilla. When I see three squares of the same resource, I think, "What a waste, I wish I had two different resources instead of three the same". The second and third plot give a small water bonus and they *might* be useful for trade, but I'd much rather have a second health or happiness bonus in the BFC.

I like the current implementation. Yes, it woudl be more valuable if you got multiple different resources, but more valuable doesn't mean better from a design perspective.

I like that you only get one health resource, but get the tile yield from multiple tiles. If you want multiple health resources, you shoudl have to expand in different directions, not get them all from the same cluster.

There are several technologies that harness the Holtzman effect:

OK, thanks. The other Holtzman effects are very deep in the tech tree, so if we want to use it in the mid game, this part of the tech tree should maybe be redesigned.

@LT: Looks like you read the same Wikipedia page about the Holtzman effect that I did... :)

I've posted on the unit prog thread about the current unit combat classes. I think we should probably settle those before we decide whether to call them hovers or suspensor craft or whatever.

I like the current implementation. Yes, it woudl be more valuable if you got multiple different resources, but more valuable doesn't mean better from a design perspective.

As a compromise I can make the clumping slightly less probable.

hey ,
i really like the term suspenders instead of hover - ,

1. suspenders are more native to the books

2. hover is too common name in the future mods available...i rather have more distinct terms :)

maybe we can rename the hovering tech to holzman suspenders.

deliverator,
your suggestion on the stratigic bonuses sound good, i like that analysis.

i also support to cut down some bonuses, as david once said, "more" is not necessary "the merrier".

and i indeed misunderstood the mineral extraction.

and for patch 1.3.8 -
how about adding a second feature? maybe not as abundant as spice or salt, but something to give the map more meat into it -
i offered a few kinds of minerals - phosphates, rock salt, there are ton of salt kinds and minerals fit to be in the desert.
for art we can use the same art as salt with different textures.

Holtzman suspenders.... sorry, just the mental image.

:)

That's two in two days, after keldath called david's work 'impotent' the other day.

hehehehehe

damn...i hate this spell checker!

your gonna see more of it, i tend to do a lot of spelling errors when i write...,
but im glad i amuse you guys :)

@ Deliverator: in your bonus rebalancing, please bump up the likelihood of Little Maker. This is needed to build Reverend Mothers. (The BUILD_FISHING_BOATS action is also missing from unitinfos, worker, buildinfos; but I can do that in "my" next patch.) In several maps I generated as tests, there were no LM at all. The sandtrout resource appears occasionally, but it is not used for anything right now. LM is needed for Water of Life and to build RM.

No problem, I'll take that into account.

hey guys,
i wanna bring up two mods that maybe we can make use of:

vicinity mod,

this mod will allow us to limit units/buildings to bonuses, that are only located within the city borders,

perhaps this can add some intrest to the bonus importance and use - think of this like:
say uranium is needed for a nuke, so if set, a nuke can only be built where there's a city that has uranium in its borders, it doesnt matter if you have it in your empire.

and the second corp,
that i guess most of you wont like,
is a population limit,
you can limit a city to grow up to a certain size,
and after it it will only grow if you either build buildings that increase size, or via tech.
its like in civ 2 where you had to have aqueduct to pass size 7.

what do you think?

I think the movement away from aqueducts towards health was a great design decision, I'd hate to go back to the old aqueduct system.

I also don't see why it wouldn't be pretty easy to move some uranium around to wherever you need to build Nukes; it also would mean that you can't trade for a strategic resource that you don't possess, and that you're vulnerable to whatever fickle resource placement exists in your game (what if the uranium near you was 1 tile outside your BFC?).

I can't think of anything where you'd really need the resource to be provided locally.

As a small note, after looking up fremen agriculture in the Dune Encyclopedia, apparently they were rather keen on Coffee and Taburroot (a form of sweetened tuber rather akin to a sweet potatoe). it might make some moding easier if the coffee graphic is used. :)

We have Coffee as a bonus now. Taburroot sounds quite interesting.

some more food type information

Other staples on Dune were Butter, Cheese, Milk, and Kvetch (clabbered Milk Drink). Fruist consisted of Dates, Figs, Apricots, with the occasional Portygul or Imported Caladan Melon, as well as rice when the Fremen Found out about it. Vegetables were almost unheard of, with the exception of the Tabarroot (earlier misspell on my part). Meats consisted of Hare and Chukka (a fowl) that was roasted typically into a ste. Breads consisted ofa spice laden bread worked into various forms (pitas, torillas, loaves, etc).

hey guys,

how about - removing the gold bonus from lands - only tiles with a bonus will have gold to it - most lands will be hammers and water.

?

Why?

The big water yields from some tiles already drives you towards a specialist economy, away from a cottage economy. Reducing the tile yields of worked tiles will only encourage this further.

I vote no.

ok just a thought :)

Here's a spreadsheet in Excel and OpenOffice format for tuning the balance of resources.

The aim of the game is to change iTilesPer (corresponding to the tag of the same name in Civ4BonusInfos.xml) so that the Fullness of Map value stays close to 1 and you have the proportion of each bonus that you want to achieve. You can then update the iTilesPer values in Civ4BonusInfos.xml to correspond to the spreadsheet values.

If people think there is too much of this or too little of that, then they can use this to change things.

hey deliverator, thanks,

i am not so good at understanding the xml tags that control the resources appearance.

anyway, wee need to fix the bonuses that does not appear on the map.

This is a little confusing but it works OK. The confusing part is that all of the insect bonuses start out invisible. I assume this is by accident, but the Desert Plantation tech is required to even see these bonuses.

As part of the "Dune Wars Reduced" project, I have deleted "meagre" and "plentiful" groundwater, and the hare and hawk bonuses. I have also made the insect bonuses visible by default. Without making any other changes, this seems to generate a much better spread of bonuses. Each starting area has a few groundwaters and a few other resources around.

It seems I dont have the Civ4BonusInfos.xml.
Or is it hidden somewhere else?

Nvm... was looking in the wrong file.

This is a little confusing but it works OK. The confusing part is that all of the insect bonuses start out invisible. I assume this is by accident, but the Desert Plantation tech is required to even see these bonuses.

As part of the "Dune Wars Reduced" project, I have deleted "meagre" and "plentiful" groundwater, and the hare and hawk bonuses. I have also made the insect bonuses visible by default. Without making any other changes, this seems to generate a much better spread of bonuses. Each starting area has a few groundwaters and a few other resources around.

Did you manage to get the insect resources to appear? after changing some things I do get the plantation resources, (although it remains rare) but the insect ones still don't show up. Even after changing their appearences to really high.

You have changed some stuff, I have changed some different stuff, but here's a screenshot. The three insect ones are baradye (lower left), spice honey (lower right), etching resin (upper right). You have looked using world builder or ctrl-z, right? If you scroll around in normal mode and you don't have Desert Plantation tech, they are all hidden.

EDIT: uh, when you say you changed the frequency to "really high", you do know that this means a *low* iTilesPer, right? If you keep making iTilesPer higher, then it becomes much less likely to appear.

You have changed some stuff, I have changed some different stuff, but here's a screenshot. The three insect ones are baradye (lower left), spice honey (lower right), etching resin (upper right). You have looked using world builder or ctrl-z, right? If you scroll around in normal mode and you don't have Desert Plantation tech, they are all hidden.

EDIT: uh, when you say you changed the frequency to "really high", you do know that this means a *low* iTilesPer, right? If you keep making iTilesPer higher, then it becomes much less likely to appear.

changing to really high, I meant setting it to 1.
Ill try some more editing, without removing any resources, and see if I can get it to appear.

I assume this is by accident, but the Desert Plantation tech is required to even see these bonuses

Partly accident, partly bad idea by me. I was trying to replicate vanilla in the way certain bonuses are initially hidden.

It's strange that people are saying that some bonuses don't appear. When balancing the resources I always used the chipotle cheatcode and Ctrl-Z to check that all the bonuses are appearing somewhere.

This detailed guide of vanilla bonuses (http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/completeguide1.php) is useful, particularly the section headed Resource Improvements. It would be good to produce a list similar to that format for Dune Wars.

It should be noted that we actually have *less* land based resources than vanilla in 1.3.9b. On an Archipelago map there is less land, so I suppose that is fair.

The major difference is that we have one bonus that is of vital importance to the game in Groundwater. Groundwater is essentially a different thing from all the other bonuses because of its special role. What would be ideal would be if we could get around the rule that no two bonuses of different kinds may be adjacent. If we could place the Groundwater down and then have everything else placed free from this restriction, that would be ideal. I know you can handle Bonus placement in the mapscript - that might be the only way to do this.

With Strategic resources you can switch iNormalize on to have extra instances of the bonus placed around start locations. For example, we might want to do this for Crystal seeing as it is a requirement for the midgame suspensor craft - and as Ahriman noted not having it really hampers you at the moment.

Also, to see the impact of changing the bonuses you really have to run a few Autoplays.

What would be ideal would be if we could get around the rule that no two bonuses of different kinds may be adjacent. If we could place the Groundwater down and then have everything else placed free from this restriction, that would be ideal. I know you can handle Bonus placement in the mapscript - that might be the only way to do this.

So, removing the other two groundwater resources (meagre and plentiful) frees up a lot of space on the map for other resources. That may be the key difference in my local change.

Actually, reducing the proportion of the three Groundwaters would have had the same effect as removing the two other kinds. The reason is that all three Groundwaters have iUnique set to 1, meaning that no two instances can be adjacent. This is why Groundwater gobbles up the available space so much, but it is desirable to avoid clumping of Groundwater which wasn't popular. So there is a balancing act: too much Groundwater leaves too little space for anything else; too little means some really bad/challenging start positions and more variation between Civ's growth/performance.

hey david,

are you planing on doing something for the current version?

maybe making that all of the bonuses will appear? and some more tweaks?

All bonuses do appear I think. It's just that some are very rare, and there are some that require techs to become visible which we have agreed should not.

I have locally made one controversial change, which is to remove the meagre and plentiful waters altogether. I have not playtested this, and Ahriman has said several times he thinks this change would make mid game city growth too hard.

At the same time I have removed hawks and hares. These two changes make my maps look much more interesting to me, but as I said I have not playtested. I am not planning a separate patch of this.

and Ahriman has said several times he thinks this change would make mid game city growth too hard
I will shut up now :-)

A bit of feedback on bonuses in dune reduced 1.4.4.

I agree with Ahriman, the cutback of Groundwater is too drastic. This version is too successful in creating a feeling of a barren wasteland! I'll play with the number to see if there's a nicer balance because I think growth is too disrupted at present. If we can come up with new names for the three levels of Groundwater, then we should consider adding them back. If we had three different names and three different graphics that would help give a feeling of variety.

Since normalize just slaps down extra bonuses after the main bonus placement, you get some starts that have 3 nitrates for example. That is excessive. I think if we have normalize on for a bonus we need to increase the iTilesPer to compensate.

Shall we just ditch Iron Ore? It doesn't seem to be adding much right now. It is a strategic resource with no associated units.

because I think growth is too disrupted at present.

Growth is high with 2 tier1 buildings (greenhouse and weather scanner both give +25% water) but very very variable. Some city sites have only 1-2 water sources, others can have 4.

My preferred solution would be to have more groundwater and dew-collector plots (ie increase their spawn rate in map script), and have dew collectors get +1 water from some midgame tech, but reduce the +% bonuses from these buildings, +50% water in the first age is just too much. How about cutting them down to +15% each?
I don't see why the weather scanner gives water bonus at all, however.

I'm agnostic about whether to re-add 2-3 different groundwater resources or just increase the groundwater spawn rate.
Either of these can help reduce the variance in water access across locations.

Variance is particularly bad for the AI; because the AI places basically anywhere, its important that nearly any tile be at least a mediocre city site; now, many many city sites would only give 1-2 water sources.

Iron or could easily be changed to Ore, but I have no problem with a resource that just gives tile yield and helps build some wonders faster.
Stone and Marble are like this in vanilla.

Iron Ore,

theres no unit assosiation because i havnt done them yet,

i feel theres too much food resources and very little strategic units, for the long run, iron ore should stay, ill give it more meaning soon.

AH29
Suggestion:
In the books there is much talk about the Imperial desert Botanical Testing Stations.
When the Atreides arrive on Dune there is mention that there are hundreds of them scattered around from the Imperial Botanical Testing era (when they were evaluating terraforming feasibility).
In one of the books people take refuge in them and loot them for stuff.

How about changing the Tribal Village into Botantical Testing Stations?
Particularly if we have the post-disaster Dune scenario in the back of our minds, it is easy to see that there could be much to gain in terms of equipment/wealth and technology from being the first to plunder these testing stations.
So I think they fit at least as well as Tribal Villages, but have more Dune flavor.
Would need some new art, obviously.

AH30
Another idea: how about changing the Bank building to Guild Bank. More fluffy. In the book, Duke Leto has a representative of the Guild Bank at his banquet.

I don't see why the weather scanner gives water bonus at all, however.

In the pre-1.4.4 sheet I posted, it gave a water bonus. You gave initial feedback that this did not make sense. In the 1.4.4 release, it *does not* give a water bonus.

If we add back more levels of groundwater, please use different graphics. I feel that one kind of groundwater is enough, and if it is too rare, we should drop iTilesPer a little. Also, making this "normalized" may add more.

I don't think we need more resources which affect units; crystal, nitrates, and stravidium seem enough. I think we need the wonder-speed-doubling resources, maybe marble and stone. I was thinking that one could be an offworld import. I can add that easily.

In the 1.4.4 release, it *does not* give a water bonus.

Yes it does. At least, what I'm playing with your building updates, which I *think* is 1.4.4.
I have the greenhouse building. and in this version the weather scanner gives +1 trade route, water tiles +1 hammer AND +25% water income. Bug?

Yeah, I thought the +25% water Greenhouse thing was weird playing 1.4.4, surely a greenhouse would consume water if anything.

I don't think we need more resources which affect units; crystal, nitrates, and stravidium seem enough.

Diamonds and Uranium are also strategic bonuses I thought. I'd happily see Iron Ore replaced with a wonder doubling resource, or use an Offworld one as you say.

Yes it does. At least, what I'm playing with your building updates, which I *think* is 1.4.4.
I have the greenhouse building. and in this version the weather scanner gives +1 trade route, water tiles +1 hammer AND +25% water income. Bug?

Sigh. Missed it. Thanks. I won't bother suggesting you locally change the xml.

surely a greenhouse would consume water if anything.

I think the idea behind the greenhouse is that by using micro-drip irrigation in an enclosed greenhouse, you can grow your food much more water-efficiently than you would be planting crops outside.

How would people feel about making Windtraps buildable on non-hill tiles, but with a lower yield of water than on hills? Windtraps are the most talked about source of water in the book.

This might allow us to keep the Groundwater at a more scarce level - taken together with the forthcoming Polar Ice changes.