We now have better names for the two Fremen civs, Chouhada and Sihaya. Here are some quotes from the civilizations thread about how to make them different.

Chouhada Fremen (prev. Fremen) (theme: Jihad, the purging of Arrakis). YA HYA CHOUHADA: "Long live the fighters!" The Fedaykin battle cry. Ya (now) in this cry is augmented by the hya form (the ever-extended now). Chouhada (fighters) carries this added meaning of fighters against injustice. There is a distinction in this word that specifies the fighters are not struggling for anything, but are consecrated against a specific thing--that alone.

Sihaya Fremen (prev. Sietch Tabr) (theme: Liet's Way, the terraforming of Arrakis). SIHAYA: Fremen: the desert springtime with religious overtones implying the time of fruitfulness and "the paradise to come."

I would say that one group of Fremen should be designed to be militant Jihadists (as controlled by Alia), while the other would be aimed at being more pro-terraforming.

These are quite different agendas. I can easily imagine different Fremen going one way or the other; which is more important, waging a jihad to spread your religion across the planet (and the galaxy), or making the planet actually nice to live on?

I think its ok for most units to be the same. But I would differentiate them mostly with UBs; the terraformers get things like deathstills and better windtraps that give better water income (and maybe their spaceport tradegood could be a unique resource that makes the reservoir buildings build faster; so double the cost of the reservoirs and then make them build 50% faster with this resoruce?), while the jihadists get things that increase their military potential, particularly of their infantry, like the sietch bonus that gives extra infantry mobility.

I could also see the Jihadists getting some cheap spammable fanatics UUs who have no upkeep cost and whose death did not cause war weariness.

Today (1.3.8) they have all the same UB and UU:

Windtrap (replaces Qanat ...)
Deathstill (replaces food warehouse, better growth)
Fremkit (replaces space center ...)
Stillsuit workshop (gives 3 units of stillsuit bonus, +1 health)

The former Sietch Tabr Fremen have one more UB, because four wasn't enough:
Sietch (replaces walls, gives units a free stillsuit promotion)

Fremen Rover (replaces acolyte)
Sandwalker (replaces bladesman)
Naib's Chosen (replaces Mentat Assassin)
Desert Crawler (replaces Heavy Roller)
Fedaykin (replaces Shock Trooper)

Some of these don't make a lot of sense to me, and there are a lot. In related news, in the worm rider mechanics thread, I have figured out how to give a 2x movement promotion on desert. I proposed to give the Fremen a set of UU for settler, scout, worker and basic foot infantry, which would automatically get the desert move promotion.

I think there are too many UU/UB here, with several overlapping ideas.

How should we resolve this? I propose to remove all their existing UB except Deathstill, and remove all their existing UU except Fedaykin and Naib's Chosen; then add four UU for settler, scout, worker, soldier. These UU will be identical except for the 2x desert move promotion. I will add the 2x desert promotion to Fedaykin and Naib's Chosen.

What do you think? This still does not differentiate them much, but it gives them a consistent theme anyway.

wait on my patch 1.3.9,

i do think they should share the uus but maybe different ub's,

also maybe we can add some more diversity.

Windtrap, Sietch and Fremkit buildings can be scrapped I think, they don't make much sense or overlap with other things. In general though, I don't have a problem with having more than three UBs or UUs per faction if they all serve a purpose and add distinctiveness.

I like them having the Fremen Stillsuits as a unique bonus, hence the Stillsuit Workshop. Not a fan?

The Naib's Chosen should be melee fighters, a half-way house to the Fedaykin, rather than Mentat Assassin style units IMO.

From theme the Fedaykin and the Sardaukar should probably be the most powerful human units in the game.

For the Chouhada, I've suggested using the Draft mechanic to create cheap disposable fighters. Also, perhaps some ability to capture other factions units and use them. I like the passage from the book where the Fremen capture a Thopter, that says a lot about the Fremen's guerilla fighting style. I think the vehicles they have now are out of place, but they should be able to hijack stuff and use it.

Also, it would be good to test drive the Leader units idea with Paul Maud'dib, generating more fighters and giving massive combat advantages wherever he goes...

Both factions should have water advantages, but the Sihaya should get more of a boost from a UB or two. Terraforming doesn't feel all that fun yet although it is nice to see the map changing. Not sure what would make it more fun...

Minor point, but I think the Stillsuit promotion for worm riding should be called Sandrider, which is the term used in the book.

Dune quote:

... the Fremen were a people whose living consisted of killing, an entire people who had lived with rage and grief all of their days, never once considering what might take the place of either - except for a dream with which Liet-Kynes has infused them before his death.

I like them having the Fremen Stillsuits as a unique bonus, hence the Stillsuit Workshop. Not a fan?

Oops, I forgot to mention that. Yes, keep it. It makes a nice difference from the other civs' landing stages.[/quote]

For the Chouhada, I've suggested using the Draft mechanic to create cheap disposable fighters. [...] Also, it would be good to test drive the Leader units idea with Paul Maud'dib, generating more fighters and giving massive combat advantages wherever he goes...

Those are both cool ideas. It's hard to teach the AI to use a unit with mixed offensive and defensive capabilities. Suppose the hero were an offensive unit, but every turn it had a chance to just plain materialize a low level combat unit. As the unit gains experience a promotion could let it spawn more powerful units, so they don't get out of date.

I thought a little more about the mechanics for drafting and generating units. I think there would need to be two separate things: a UB which has a chance to generate units each turn, and a UU which has leadership bonuses. This way the attacking unit can be out attacking, while units are generated at home. Since the AI cannot handle protecting a single powerful unit, I think these should be national units with a limit of like 5, similar to Reverend Mothers, rather than a single "king" unit.

Recruiting building

I spent a little time searching to find a good name for the recruiting building. But then, it occurred to me that googling "arabic recruiting center" might not be a good idea :-). I don't have a good name for the building yet. I think it should have a small chance per turn to generate a unit, depending on the population of the city and also the number of surrounding towns.

There are a few related mechanics which already exist. Drafting is an action button on a city which generates one unit at the cost of a pop unit plus 3 unhappiness for 10 turns. This is enabled by a tag on a civic, Way of the Wicked in DW today. In FFH, there is a crusade worldspell. This has a chance to generate many units when it is cast; it can cause towns to downgrade one level while generating the unit. It isn't clear that the AI uses drafting well; there is a recent thread about this in the BBAI sub-forum.

The unit itself could be a Chouhada UU called "Wali". In the Dune appendix this is the name of an untested Fremen youth; google says it means "trusted one", which is OK too. The concept should be a low strength unit which can quickly gain experience and upgrade into something else; if it survives the first battle, then maybe it can become something useful. You might use it to finish off crippled enemies so it can get the XP. The only trick is that throughout the game, the strength of the unit might need to increase. Maybe the unit generated should be a standard unit but it has an "untested" promotion which gives it -25% strength; the first level the unit gets would undo this promotion.

Leader unit

I am less sure about this, maybe it is not even needed. I was looking for a good "holy man" name in the appendices, but I couldn't find a good one. Sayyadina is the only thing I can come up with, but that is more of a priestess than a war leader. I am not sure what the mechanics should be. The concept is a stack of jihadi units going around attacking stuff. Maybe the leader should generate new Wali units each turn, more when it wins a battle. I am not sure how to give combat advantages to a stack; I suppose we could have a "frenzy" promotion, +25% strength, which applies to all the units stacked with the leader. Certain units, probably Fedaykin, would get +50% from frenzy instead of the base 25%.

Any thoughts?

perhaps we can do two sorts of worm riders -

one for each fremen on top of their shared uus already,

currently - the worm rider is weak and an early unit -
perhaps - as a unique thing for the fremen - we can make a special sets of promotions only for the worm -
with the passing of time - you can get a worm with more and more promotions that will keep it stron through the ages - like in future time- when building a wrom rider you get something like a promotions that gives +500% to attack - making the current worm rider 2 power - to 10..and so on.

Interesting idea. But, in the books, sandworms never appear as individuals. You attract one, ride it for a while, and release it. A long trip may involve 20 different worms. I agree we need to make worms relevant throughout the whole game, but I am not sure super-promotions on the worms is the best choice.

Maybe the double move promotion on all Fremen units will be enough; I guess we can start to see that when 1.3.10 comes out.

ok,
we need to make controlled worms by fremen to be more meaningful.

I was looking for a good "holy man" name in the appendices, but I couldn't find a good one.

'Sadu' would do it.

SADUS: judges. The Fremen title refers to holy judges, equivalent to saints.

Since the AI cannot handle protecting a single powerful unit, I think these should be national units with a limit of like 5, similar to Reverend Mothers, rather than a single "king" unit.

I would still like to see if we can find a workaround to make single powerful units work. It will give the mod much more character than resorting to National Units every time. However, I can appreciate that the AI will suicide them a lot.

I suggested before that we could do respawning of Leader units when they are killed, similar to the Immortal promotion in FFH2. They would obviously lose their promotions when respawned. Perhaps you could build in some sort of penalty, like each time they are killed it takes a longer number of turns before they respawn, and/or a fixed number of respawns. If each civs has say 3 individual heroes then the AIs got to manage something useful with at least one of them...

I don't know if FFH2 did any custom AI work with their hero units, but it might be worth looking at.

i really want hero units...wish we could get some code for that..

Why merge the fremens with one civ power, and different leader powers? No idea how hard or even possible this is to code.
It makes little sense theme wise to have them both at the same time in a game.
Civ power: all foot units can enter dessert and are ignored by worms, and maybey invisible to other landunits unless they are right next to them. kinda like the submarine is to most ships. make them unable to build more then light thopters and the first carry-all.
leader powers for the jihadist something military and espionage for guerilla warfare, (stillsuit promotion)
while the paradise fremen should get commercial bonusses from water.
Theme wise I like the deathstill, windtrap and the gardenbuilding.

At least temporarily, in 1.4, I have combined the two Fremen civs. Once we get good unique mechanics for 9 civs, then we can expand back up to 12. With the worm rider and terraforming concepts, I think we have enough. I had thought out the mechanics for generating Wali units and the leader unit, but putting this onto the Fremen seems like too much for one civ.

Would anybody object to moving this concept to Atreides instead?

Each Atreides city would have a chance of generating a free unit per turn, based on the pop of the city plus the number of surrounding full towns. Say, with pop 16, it is guaranteed to generate one unit per turn; with pop 4 and some towns, maybe one unit every five turns. The unit is whatever unit is currently draftable. I am not sure exactly how that works, but the game knows what unit is draftable and the unit type is returned by an existing python call. So I can create the unit. No unique building is needed; it happens automatically. So the AI does not need to worry about it either. When the unit is generated it has a promotion, "Untested", which is -25% strength. Whenever the unit gets a promotion (when it reaches level 2) the Untested promotion is removed.

The Atreides civ would also have a national unit with a limit of 2, called "Atreides Heir". If the unit gets killed, they just go back into the family tree and find another one. This way we do not have to worry about lack of a regicide type AI. (Of course I agree it would be great to have that, but it is hard to do, and I do not think we should count on anybody suddenly producing it.) The unit has UNITAI_ATTACK or UNITAI_COUNTER so it should go into attacking stacks. The effect of the unit is to give a +25% attack strength to all units in the plot, as long as the owner is not at war with Atreides. This represents Atreides charisma and leadership. The unit itself has a low attack strength, like 2.

It would fit the atreides. In the books its one of their strengths (besides good infantry and airforce) to have good propaganda and give people chances to prove them.

Good ideas david. Leadership and inspiring loyalty are Atreides strengths.

I would also like to see the Atreides have a limited number of strong infantry units called perhaps 'Ducal Guard' which can go toe to toe with the Sardaukar. With an Atreides Heir present they would have a good chance of beating them.

I would like to see something radical done with the Fremen: make it impossible for them to build any vehicles. Instead, their units have a % chance of capturing any vehicle they defeat.

Since they have the worms to get around the desert, the Fremen don't have the same dependence on hovers and transports.

In Dune, the Fremen capture many ornithopters and other equipment and then use it in the final assault on Arrakeen. This change would really do a lot to capture the spirit of them as guerilla raiders. It would be radical, but I think it with some tweaks it would work and make them much more distinctive.

If you need to compensate for this, then make their melee units even stronger. The Fedaykin should be able to defeat the Sardaukar. In Dune, when there is a fight between them at the Cave of Birds, there are 7 dead Sardaukar to 2 dead Fedaykin.

Capturing vehicles is a good idea. I think that once I release the 2x movement for Fremen in desert, they will be good early game raiders. If we need them even stronger or more different, we can come back to this idea.

Currently the Fedaykin are strength 24 and Sardaukar are strength 28. If the Fedaykin are stacked with the +25% Atreides Heir, that is 32 to 28, which is better but not outrageous. Also if a Reverend Mother has been stacked with some of these units, the +combat and +first strike may be enough to tip the scales.

There are imperial militia and troopers which I think of as weak Sardaukar, but these are strictly Corrino UU.

I support much less in the way of vehicles for Fremen, but I'm unsure about the idea of capturing them.

Each Atreides city would have a chance of generating a free unit per turn, based on the pop of the city plus the number of surrounding full towns. Say, with pop 16, it is guaranteed to generate one unit per turn; with pop 4 and some towns, maybe one unit every five turns. The unit is whatever unit is currently draftable. I am not sure exactly how that works, but the game knows what unit is draftable and the unit type is returned by an existing python call. So I can create the unit. No unique building is needed; it happens automatically. So the AI does not need to worry about it either. When the unit is generated it has a promotion, "Untested", which is -25% strength. Whenever the unit gets a promotion (when it reaches level 2) the Untested promotion is removed.

The Atreides civ would also have a national unit with a limit of 2, called "Atreides Heir". If the unit gets killed, they just go back into the family tree and find another one. This way we do not have to worry about lack of a regicide type AI. (Of course I agree it would be great to have that, but it is hard to do, and I do not think we should count on anybody suddenly producing it.) The unit has UNITAI_ATTACK or UNITAI_COUNTER so it should go into attacking stacks. The effect of the unit is to give a +25% attack strength to all units in the plot, as long as the owner is not at war with Atreides. This represents Atreides charisma and leadership. The unit itself has a low attack strength, like 2.

This is now implemented in 1.4.2 at this link (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8333976&postcount=78), except I did not bother with the "untested" promotion. If the units are too strong, we can decrease the appearance percentage for the same net effect.

I support much less in the way of vehicles for Fremen, but I'm unsure about the idea of capturing them.I think it may be interesting to put it as a Fremen-only promotion - and if Fremen get less vehicles, it may be nice to have some way to differentiate the infantry units more - perhaps with a couple of Fremen-only promos. Theme-wise, I think it may even be sort of nice, because Fremen then have the "shtick" of having unique trained soldiers.

Cheers, LT.

I like the idea of civ unique promotions - maybe Keldath can think about in his promotions redesign.

If we make some civ unique techs using that modcomp, then promotions could be one of the things enabled by them.

We can resurrect the Naib's Chosen unit as less-than-Fedaykin melee unit, I really like the name.

The Naib's Chosen *art* is there as Fremen Infantry (now Worm Rider). If we find good opportunities for Fremen UU, we can certainly use the name.

unique promotions?

i can do this, yeah, i have a modcomp inside the dune code that can work this.

(redirected from offworld trade thread)

I don't like the free-unit-spawn mechanic. There is no strategy there; no decisions that the player makes to encourage this or anything, its just free units.

Thanks for the feedback. In 1.4.4, I did tone down the spawn rate a lot. But let's take that as a "first draft" and decide what to do differently. One possibility is to move the unit generation to the Fremen instead of Atreides. However, Fremen already get double move in desert for all their early units. (In 1.4.7 this will actually work, because I have added UU for these units which can move onto deep desert and desert waste.) If we give Fremen some variant of the unit spawning mechanic, that may make them too powerful.

As usual one of the handicaps for "medium sized" mods is teaching the AI to use it. The advantage of having units spawn completely automatically is that we do not need to teach the AI anything. If the spawned units come at the expense of something else, then the core AI needs to know how to trade off the spawned units against that. As a small example, suppose we simply make this spawn happen when a building is built. We can give this unit a high AI weight so the AI is interested in building it, but it still won't know why. If there is any strategic tradeoff a player would find interesting, it will be hard to have the AI make the same tradeoff.

My thought was that the interesting tactical decision is how to *use* the larger armies you get, rather than asking the player to control when/where these armies appear. Can you suggest something which doesn't have too strong an impact on the core AI, but may be more interesting than just having units appear automatically?

I don't understand why Fremen should automatically get more military units than anyone else, but if this is what you wanted, then just give them a UB that gives a +% military production bonus, either a buildable building or a "Fremen population" building that appears automatically in all their cities (ie give Fremen a UB Palace that gives a Fremen Population building in every city they control).

Thats better than free units, because it lets you choose when and where the units show up, and what type of units you get. So there is much more player input. And the AI could easily use that.

But I think that greater water efficiency, greater desert strength and mobility and potentially better infantry but worse mechanization suit Fremen much better than just "more units". There is nothing very Fremeny about "more units".

Your original suggestion was to give the Chouhada Fremen cheap jihadi warriors that did not cause war weariness. We could address that with a generic UU, I was trying to find some mechanic which is more interesting than just a UU. Any suggestions?

Something that FFH uses (and Warhammer) is a "racial" slot. Dwarven units are dwarves, and come with the dwarf promotion that gives double moves in hills. Elves have double moves in forests. Undead and demons have various effects.

Rather than doing these things through, why not have all Fremen infantry get a built in "Fremen" promotion, that gives them can enter deep desert, +20% combat strength in deep desert/desert waste/dunes, and double moves in deep desert/desert waste/dunes. You could also make them invisible in deep desert (though not desert waste) - there is code in Fall Further that allows that.
So they still use mostly the same infantry units as everyone else, but theirs have a racial promotion that gives all these desert extras.

And then remove their ability to build most mechanized units and aircraft, or replace those mechanized units with Infantry UUs.
For example, you could replace the light carryall with a Worm transport unit.
So, no scorptions, thopters, hornets, siege units above mortar.

That would make them play *very* differently.

I still like the idea of cheap Jihadis that have no war weariness, but why don't we make this attached to the Messianism religion, rather than the Fremen civ?

They currently get double move in desert. Adding +20% combat in desert is easy, but it is unlikely that they will find any combat units there. If I make them invisible, what unit should detect them?

I can easily prevent them from building any unit except infantry. Then their highest strength unit will be Fedaykin, which will get chewed up by late game strength 40 tanks. So if they haven't won by the middle game, they are screwed. Is there something else we should do? Or did you mean that for each of the high strength late game units, there should be an equivalent Fremen UU which is the same strength except it has an infantry unit art? That does not seem to "play" very differently, it just "looks" different.

If I make them invisible, what unit should detect them?

Thopters should detect invisible units.
In desert they can ambush incoming transports, and are less vulnerable to being picked off by thopters.

Instead of the heavy tank, give them an anti-tank infantry unit in the same tech slot; this is what I meant by "replacing some of the mechanized units with UUs".
Not just something with the same stats and a different art; as you say, that wouldn't make them play differently.

It plays different because:
a) they won't have the mobile armor units. They will have very poor mobility on land.
b) They won't have the really high strength of the highest power tank unit, though that is very late game indeed. They'll should have a unit that can defend against it (some kind of anti-tank trooper) but not one with the same offensive power.
c) They won't have aircraft, and the ability to soften units up with those, and their general utility.
d) They won't have decent siege units, but lots of their good infantry ignores city walls.

However, they will have larger cities (water bonus from buildings), and better infantry, and a much greater ability to act as raiders. Pillage enemy stuff, then retreat into the desert, where the enemy can't follow (or where you at least have an advantage).
They shouldn't be able to match in sheer on-land brute force strength, thats the point.

You could add a base 10% combat strength onto the Fremen promotion too to signify their general superior training.

I don't think there is a way for a unit to be visible on one terrain type but invisible on another. That is a critical point for your suggestion, correct?

There is in Fall Further, Xienwolf coded a means of doing it, but not normally. Up to you to decide whether or not it is worth trying to import their method. Its a reasonably low priority I think in this design, its not critical to generally making the Fremen racial promotion give bonuses in deserts.

The point of the racial promotion is that it lets you add these benefits to the normal units for just the one faction, without having to make UUs for all of them.

I don't understand why Fremen should automatically get more military units than anyone else... There is nothing very Fremeny about "more units".

In the book, the Harkonnens and Emporer initially believe that there are only thousands of Fremen, but there are actually 10 million or more. It is partly the suprise in their strength of numbers that helps them win the battle for Dune. I suppose with our vague post-apocalyptic backstory you could argue that they would all have been wiped out, but is reasonable to say that the Fremen would be able multiply in number more quickly given their desert knowledge and be able to field more units sooner. Granted, it is not especially huge additional Fremen flavour, but I'd argue that a numeric advantage fits them more than it would fit anyone else.

The invisibility ideas sound good - if they are achievable.

I still maintain that they should only be able to get vehicles by capturing them. That is entirely thematically consistent with what happens in the book, and would make them more interesting. If you could do the invisibility too then you could ambush units and capture them, just like happens in Dune with the Sardaukar's ornithopter or Gurney Halleck's smuggler group.

But when you think "Fremen", do you think "high numbers and vehicle capturing"? I'd argue that superior melee infantry, cultural water efficiency, worm riding and desert mobility and strength are much more central to Fremen flavor.

Yeah, there are lots of Fremen in the book. But they don't win through Soviet-style human waves. They are a quality, not quantity army.

I have no particular issue with a Fremen-only promotion that have stiff requirements (combat 2 or 3?) say gives them a 50% chance of capturing a defeated vehicle, but this should be a minor thing for flavor, not a major strategic design. Slippery slope mechanics are bad; if you kill the enemy unit, you're already a unit up. If you kill their unit *and* capture it for yourself, you're 2 unit up.

When I think 'Fremen' from a military point of view, I think "desert power" and guerilla tactics. A major part of that is desert mobility, strength, worm riding, best melee units as you describe, but I think capturing vehicle units even at a low chance adds to the guerilla feel. "Fremen do not like to abandon equipment, Muad'Dib" - Dune, pg523.

My 2 cents:

Removing most vehicle units for Fremen and replacing them with infantry UUs would be a great move, even if those UUs have similar stats to the vehicles they replace, if only because it would give them a much more "Fremen" appearance. Similar, but not identical stats - i.e. lower mobility on Fremen units, but lower cost and/or percent bonuses vs. vehicles. To be clear they should all get the double desert movement/desert invisibility on top of that, this'd give them mobility comparable to vehicles in the desert but a disadvantage on land. The invisibility also has the great side effect of allowing Fremen troops to evade sandworms, I think it's worth adding in for that reason if no other. If invisibility on desert-only is too difficult to code, could you make them invisible everywhere but allow any infantry to see invisibility? So basically they'd have desert invisibility and be able to avoid sandworms, but get anywhere near a city or any piece of land with a foot soldier guarding it and invisibility no longer works. This even makes sense as far as the books - a Fremen in the desert is difficult for a thopter to spot, but if he walks right up next to a Sardaukar he'll probably get spotted.

Of course most civs have infantry and vehicles to choose from, if you just go and replace every vehicle with an infantry, the Fremen wind up with a bunch of similar infantry to pick from. But there are ways to differentiate two infantry of similar strength; the "raider" might have a +25% or so vs. vehicles, i.e. he's trained to ambush thopters and such like in the book, give him speed 2 as well; while the "bladesman" might have a +30% vs. melee fighters, i.e. he's trained in straight up killing folks with daggers, plus 1 base strength higher than the "raider" but only speed 1. Put the bladesman where normal infantry are for other civs or where Fremen infantry UUs already are in the tech tree, put the raider in place of a vehicle. Your idea of specific stats may vary, my point is there are ways to give the Fremen more infantry units that feel as different from each other as infantry vs. vehicles do for other civs. Although I strongly feel basic Fremen infantry should get that bonus vs. melees, they are supposed to be without a doubt better than Sardaukar or anyone else, and a specific bonus vs. melee gives them that without making them overpowered (you can still counter them with thopters, suspensors, etc).

It may sound like a stretch to have two different infantry at every tier of the tech tree, but you do want players to have choices instead of just one good infantry unit (or the Fremen suddenly become simpler than every other civ), and it's better flavor-wise to have two different infantry than infantry + Fremen suspensor destroyers.

On a similar note Fremen should really get something to represent the offensive power of a sandworm, which they use to great effect at least once in the books - this could be their replacement for str40+ lategame tanks. So currently a heavy scorpion is str45/speed2, 25% penalty in cities and 25% bonus vs. suspensors, while a suspensor cruiser is 40/6 with collateral damage/bombard. I'd replace either one with a sandworm (presumably being ridden by a Fremen, but you could just use the existing sandworm graphic), 50/2 with 3x movement in desert, -50% city strength, higher cost than the suspensor/scorpion. The idea is that the Fremen rule the sands with a more powerful and faster unit than anything else - but up on the rocks the worm moves more slowly and gets a huge disadvantage trying to attack a city (sandworms could be coaxed onto rock, Leto II did it at least once in the books, but they sure don't like it and they'd be at a disadvantage fighting/moving on rock, and especially at a disadvantage in the confines of a city). [Yes, Fremen didn't directly train and keep sandworms like pets, they sent infantry out to capture them, and could only control one for a short time - but honestly I feel that makes things too complicated for the AI and player both, it's easier to just have a lategame "sandworm" unit you can build, think of it as a specialized infantry team that can grab a sandworm whenever they need it.]

Edit: The bonus strength in desert for Fremen units also wouldn't hurt - it's not terribly likely that they'll find a lot of units to fight in the deep desert, but if they do encounter the occasional thopter or suspensor out there, it makes sense that they'd be able to ambush it and have an advantage. It's a small thing, but together with added desert mobility/invisibility, it adds into the whole theme of "Fremen are pretty good on land, but you really don't want to run across them in the desert."

Regarding worms as late stage tanks, we have tried a few different directions on this in this slightly older thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=327238). One problem is that there is no logical reason to make it a late game unit, and it is too powerful as an early game unit.

In the next couple of days, once 1.4.6 is out, we should have a thread on the design of UU/UB for all the civs.

On another, completely unrelated note - I really think all infantry should be able to move across desert. Consider:
1.) Logically, there's no reason my Sardaukar or whatever shouldn't be able to march across a single tile of desert waste to reach a neighboring "island". This is my biggest reason, I can't describe how frustrating (and micro-intensive) it is to need thopters/caryalls to ferry infantry across 1-2 tiles of desert.
2.) They won't move terribly fast, 1 speed isn't much across a big desert with no roads, so caryalls are still useful.
3.) If Fremen get the proposed double desert movement speed/desert invisibility, Fremen will still have that unique "desert power" theme even if all infantry can cross desert. Even moreso if Fremen get a strength bonus in desert, they can then ambush those Sardaukar trying to cross the sands and have a natural advantage. This actually happens in the book, it seems strange ingame that infantry can't fight on the dunes.
4.) It should help the AI - no more single thopters killing off entire invading armies by hitting a caryall enroute, no more suspensors/thopter raiders picking off single infantry or pillaging improvements then retreating 1 tile into the desert waste for effective immunity to the AI's infantry defenders (I know I do both of those way too much, even though it feels so evil to pick on the AI's weaknesses).

Well, really, there's no logical reason for a lot of the things that are reserved for the lategame - these guys shouldn't have to reinvent the proverbial wheel, they should already know these things. I don't see that as a reason to leave out something that would fit gameplay-wise, but up to you.

On another, completely unrelated note - I really think all infantry should be able to move across desert. Consider:
1.) Logically, there's no reason my Sardaukar or whatever shouldn't be able to march across a single tile of desert waste to reach a neighboring "island". This is my biggest reason, I can't describe how frustrating (and micro-intensive) it is to need thopters/caryalls to ferry infantry across 1-2 tiles of desert.

This is a key design point from May. Do you play vanilla archipelago maps? Same problem. If we make the entire map land, then the AI will fail to use the transport units.

Is it not possible to have infantry able to enter desert waste tiles only within cultural borders? That would be the ideal solution IMO.

Is it not possible to have infantry able to enter desert waste tiles only within cultural borders? That would be the ideal solution IMO.

You have mentioned that idea several times, and I do not know how to do it. Rather, I am sure there is no way to move differently on identical terrain types based on cultural control, in either xml or python. I guess it would be a change inside the sdk.

BTW, I guess you have suggested this because it happens in some other mods. What happens when your city is destroyed, and your stack of units is standing in the water? Do they all drown?

Rather, I am sure there is no way to move differently on identical terrain types based on cultural control

Sorry, but don't triremes/galleys do this in vanilla? They cannot enter ocean tiles outside cultural borders with any tech, but can enter ocean tiles within cultural borders. Its been a long time since I played vanilla, I admit.

In Planetfall, infantry units are also able to enter coastal tiles (and get double moves there). I *thought* only within cultural borders, but it could be any coastal tiles. The infantry get a defense penalty when on coastal tiles, so the AI tries very strongly to make sure that its troops do not end the turn on a coastal tile.

Also, would it be so bad if all infantry were able to walk through desert wastes, but not deep desert? That way, they wouldn't use transports for islands connected by desert waste, but they would use transports to access islands separated by deep desert.

Sorry, but don't triremes/galleys do this in vanilla?

I would have sworn this was not the case, but a five minute experiment reveals you are correct. I don't think that is controlled by anything in the xml, so it must be deep inside the sdk logic of what moves where. We can put this on the list of things to figure out about sdk movement, along with your unload/pillage/move/repeat exploit.

Also, would it be so bad if all infantry were able to walk through desert wastes, but not deep desert? That way, they wouldn't use transports for islands connected by desert waste, but they would use transports to access islands separated by deep desert.

Of course then your next request would be for infantry to be able to cross one square of deep desert, right?

We are not trying to introduce micromanagement pain here, but our goal had been to do something like vanilla archipelago. If we cannot figure out an sdk change to allow this, the question is moot, but we can keep it in mind.

Of course then your next request would be for infantry to be able to cross one square of deep desert, right?

Nope, not me! :-)

But there is the combination factor of a) realism and b) gameplay improvement from not being quite so limited with infantry. There is also an interesting strategic contrast if they are less mobile than vehicles in terms of moves per turn, but more mobile in terms of tiles they can enter.

I also would never play vanilla archipelago, I hate that script. Naval warfare in civ is bad (no interesting terrain variation, no real strategic placement of units, often only 1 combat unit per tech tier), and the AI is always mediocre at best at transport use. I think the goal of Dune should be to use the archipelago script to make landscapes that look cool, and many deserts that are difficult to cross, but not to trap the AI on tiny islands or replicate the generally poor (IMO) combat dynamics of the archipelago script.
Obviously, YMMV.

I will consider my preferences noted, however, and not bring them up again.

In Planetfall, infantry units are also able to enter coastal tiles (and get double moves there). I *thought* only within cultural borders, but it could be any coastal tiles. The infantry get a defense penalty when on coastal tiles, so the AI tries very strongly to make sure that its troops do not end the turn on a coastal tile.

I play Planetfall all the time and they indeed can only move in their cultural boundaries. However, they can unload onto an adjacent land tile that borders the water tile that is in their cultural boundaries.

I need to read this thread in full but I must say that perhaps the Fremen (or one of the Fremen Civs) could almost be like the old SMAC:AC Pirates faction in that they have a better ability to travel in dessert and can colonize more of the landmasses that are small and way out in the 'deep desert'