No crashes thus far.

AH83
Corrino are still starting with a Hawk thopter rather than a scout thopter.
This can make it too easy to knock a nearby civ out of the game, hawk thopter >>> soldier.

AH84
Techs seem to be coming too fast. I suspect we need an across the board ~20-25% tech cost increase, in addition to some higher/lower tech costs for some techs.

AH85
Quad is strength 8? THat is way too much for such an early game unit. It should be 5 or at most 6 IMO.
The design from here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=325388&page=5 post 93 had it at strength 5 with a 30% withdraw chance.

AH86
Early game expansion is a bit fast; maybe we should increase the cost of settlers?

AH87
Now that we have early game solar farms and turbines, we can remove mines from being buildable on flatlands. Otherwise the AI tends to spam them like crazy with slavery.
Also, maybe deep and core mines should be buildable on peaks?

AH88
Coffee clusters a bit too much.

See screenshot.

AH89
3 turns is a bit too short for a lot of the improvement construction time. I'd make it so every improvement takes at least 4 turns, some take 5.

AH90
Bringing the Greenhouse down to +15% water might help too.

AH91
I think the AI may have been messed up with the turbine change, it now seems to think that turbines (or mines with slavery) are better than cottages, and doesn't really build cottages anymore.

hey ahriman, and the rest,


just a thought,

i dont think we need to open up a thread every single version we have, in the long run, it will create too much spam in our sub forum,

see other mods, they all use - "bug reports" for discussing feedback.

What is about making threads like 1.4.x, 1.5.x .....? This will reduce thread spamming by factor 10 but still provide a basic seperation.

I'm fine with a thread per patch myself. I don't see this as thread spamming. I don't get this reluctance to open new threads when there is a clear a distinct new subject/patch to discuss. Checking the numbers, the posts per thread is much higher here than most of the other subforums.

I'm happy to go with whatever you guys prefer; I thought that this was the format you wanted.

AH92
Heavy trooper should not upgrade to ginaz swordsmen.

AH93
The requirements for cultural border expansion are weird; quite different from vanilla. I'm fine with slower expansion at the start, but then the expansion from 4-5-6-7 rings don't seem to take nearly enough culture.

AH94
Units unloaded from transports seem to have full movement - I thought this was not intended? Maybe the fix that led units without movement get loaded into a transport also made them still have full movement when unloaded?

AH95
Late game, I get a python exception:
"Can't find type enum for type tag IMPROVEMENT_FORT"
Clearly there is still something that points to the (now missing) improvement.

AH96
The AI is doing a *lousy* job of offshore colonization. Even after hundreds and hundreds of turns they still won't colonize other islands.

Is this something in transport AI? Do we need to go back to having settlers able to cross desert tiles without transport?

Take a look at the save.

ok...it doesnt really matter anyway.

guys, plz tun a few games on autoplay, say 1000 turns with low speed to see that theres no ctd.

ill do this as well.

i had a ctd that i couldn't reproduce.

AH97
Sardaukar Legionary isn't in the game yet.
Sardaukar Noukker has a +25% vs guardsmen, which wasn't intended.
The Sardaukar Noukker (strength 20) is basically a super-version of the elite shock trooper (strength 18), who comes with +2 strength (and March, which I like). I could see it go up 1 more strength (to 21), but it doesn't need +25% vs guardsmen; the highest strength guardsmen in the game are strength 18, so it already beats those.

AH98
Atreides heir is buildable by anyone.

AH84b
I think some of the reason for the rapid tech rate is the high willingness of the AIs to trade techs even if they don't have good relations.

Lowering AI willingness to trade tech, (and turning off the tech-diffusion mod if its still on) would probably improve the situation.
As would some of the other changes (more expensive settlers and workers, toned down bonus water from greenhouse and water refinery 25%->15%, longer improvement build times, universal tech-cost increase).

But something needs to be done; in my current game on turn 204 I have 60-odd techs researched, including Kindjal blades (for Fedaykin), and 535 commerce income (giving me 759 beakers and 259 gold at 70science/30 gold slider ratio).
[*edit* And this is without any religious shrines and zero spice resources.]

AI aggressiveness also probably needs to be toned up some; the AI isn't starting many wars, even when it has much bigger armies (because it can buy the soldiers it needs with all its gold from the unlimited troop supply of off-world trade).

I thought I was helping things by removing the RevDCM related game options from the game options menu. But I have noticed that these options get turned on by themselves. If this happens to you, there is no easy way to tell.

Could you please look into My Documents/My Games/Beyond The Sword/CivilizationIV.ini, and look for the line which reads "GameOptions =" and then a bunch of 0's and 1's. The last four correspond to the RevDCM options. If you have any 1's there, please change to zero and save. I have seen these magically turn themselves on when I switch from playing one mod to another, and then back. I dunno why.

If the AI's are getting tech fast because of the tech diffusion option turning itself back on, we will have to find some other way to disable it. Like, for example, rebuilding the dll with RevDCM out.

I noticed that revolutions were happening when I was running a test. Which parts of RevDCM do we actually want to keep? If our default is to have most of it disabled then it would make sense to clean up the DLL.

I am not sure this is related, but I disabled the revolution screen icon in the last MainInterface.py update to have more space for the homeworld icon. Having no revolution icon in the upper right corner doesn't indicate an absence of the revolution mod... just want to say. :)

Game options are:

; Game Options
GameOptions = 00000000000110000000000011110

I normally have no tech brokering and permanent alliances on.

I'll change the last 4.

On the tech costs: tech costs should be fairly low until ~tier 7 or so, and then should scale up *significantly*.
The end game techs probably need to scale up even more, since economies grow exponentially.

Also: deactivating tech dispersion highlights even more the AI's inability to expand well.

I'm having more luck playing on a small map with low desert levels, so that the islands are larger and the AI expands more.

AH99
Tleilaxu also start with a hawk thopter, instead of scout thopter.

AH100
The bonus from circumnavigating the globe is still there - I thought this was to be removed?

AH101
Large numbers of fresh water lakes are being generated. These do nothing except provide + 1water.
Intended?

AH102
Mercantilism civic is intended to require the Protected Trade tech, but currently requires the Solaris economy tech.

AH103
Salt pans would be more interesting and more significant if it took *much* longer for workers to clear them. As it is, at 4 turns they are barely a speed bump, and so their only real effect on gameplay is to deter the AI from settling in some areas that area actually perfectly good land.
I suggest you significantly increase the time taken to clear salt, so that settling in a salt pan takes a long time to get a decent city, like settling in jungle does in vanilla.

AH104
One of the biggest differences between this mod and vanilla (and nearly every other mod) comes from improvement yields. In vanilla, a cities food income is distributed a large number of tiles. This means that cities grow in a sustained, gradual manner over the course of their lifetime. You might have 1-2 bonus food tiles, but mostly growth comes from putting every second workers or so onto a food tile. So a size 15 city with 30 food income might get this from 2 bonus tiles and 5-6 farm tiles.

In Dunewars, this is quite different, because nearly all the food income of a city comes from only 3-4 worked tiles, a mix of groundwater, windtraps and dew collectors. What this means is that rather than growing gradually, cities grow incredibly fast in the early game and then their growth slows significantly.
The yields from these few water tiles need to be high in order to support large cities; you still need 30 food for a size 15 city. However, what this means is that a city of only size 3-4 can be earning the food income that a vanilla city of size 10+ would be earning, and so grows vastly
This is another contributing factor to why expansion is so fast.

My proposal is this; we leave the tile yields where they are, but we increase the amount of food that must be accumulated to increase city population size at low sizes.
Leave fixed the amount of food needed to grow from size 10->11, or 11->12, but increase the amount of food needed to grow from size 1-2, 2-3 up to maybe 9-10.

Maybe Size 2-6 need an extra 25% food each over their current level, and size 7-10 need another 15% food over their current requirements.

Is this a parameter that is easy to change? Or is it pretty hard-coded into the engine?

This woudl be a good way to slow down the explosive growth while still having large cities possible in the late-game.


AH105
Arrakis spice civic isn't giving a diplomatic bonus to other Arrakis spice users.
Way of Liet is giving a diplomatic penalty to Neutral users.

AH106
Firefly should require liquid fuel AND air power.

AH107
How is the Bene Tl cloned unit thing supposed to be working? I didn't see any signs of it working.

Not sure what issue number I raised last so I'll start again:

DV1 - Polar Ice needs to be added to a Route Enabling technology - see attached. (Unless it is and I haven't got the tech yet...)

DV1 - Polar Ice needs to be added to a Route Enabling technology - see attached. (Unless it is and I haven't got the tech yet...)

Good call, probably just needs the polar terrain (and polar desert waste?) to be added to the Dune topography tech (or desert trade, or water transportation).

AH107. How is the Bene Tl cloned unit thing supposed to be working? I didn't see any signs of it working.

Please see the dune wars concepts tab of the dune-o-pedia, unique abilities section. Do you have an axlotl tank built?

DV1 - Polar Ice needs to be added to a Route Enabling technology

Away from game at the moment, but do you have the tech for deep desert trade? That is, can you hook up a resource on another archipelago?

Do you have an axlotl tank built?

Nope, didn't realize it needed a building. I'll test it later then.


Away from game at the moment, but do you have the tech for deep desert trade? That is, can you hook up a resource on another archipelago?

From the screenshot he shouldn't need deep desert trade; all she should need is polar and polar desert waste.

DV1 - Yes, I had Dune Topography for trade on Deep Desert.

AH96
The AI is doing a *lousy* job of offshore colonization. Even after hundreds and hundreds of turns they still won't colonize other islands.

This is my experience too. We seem to have taken a step backward somehow.

AI aggressiveness also probably needs to be toned up some; the AI isn't starting many wars, even when it has much bigger armies (because it can buy the soldiers it needs with all its gold from the unlimited troop supply of off-world trade).

Agreed, it's more like Dune Tea Party than Dune Wars right now. It seems I can expand a huge amount and the AI just threatens me without following through and declaring war. I am the instigator of most conflicts. I've been thinking we should go through the exercise Planentfall went through (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=321234) giving their leaders more personality. Making everyone somewhat more aggresive can be part of this. I suppose the proposed new religion design will have a effect too. I'd like to see us implement civ attitude modifiers along the lines of this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8327592&postcount=66) which would make war more likely as well.

The AI is doing a *lousy* job of offshore colonization. Even after hundreds and hundreds of turns they still won't colonize other islands.

This have to be something we did recently. I remember when I released my early unit patch (with the awesome scout thopter!) I made sure AI settle the whole map. There was even some complaint about AI settling too much.
Not sure what happened... the last person seen working on transports was David.... :)

On the subject of AI Declarations of War, this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8165348&postcount=158) analyzing a Planetfall game was interesting to read. I wonder if the stuff about Area AIs is relevant to Dune Wars as well.

Not sure what happened... the last person seen working on transports was David.... :)

When I released 1.4.7 and 1.4.8 I ran some autoplays, and I clearly saw *sometimes* that an AI would settle onto another archipelago. So I don't think the transport changes, or the total tech tree rewrite, are *preventing* settling.

It will be painful to figure out. I don't really understand what the AI does, even in vanilla archipelago. I suppose somebody could inspect a human player's growth compared to all the AI's. The technique I suggest would be to set the civilization ini file so that an autosave is created every 20 turns and an unlimited number can be kept; then just manually play for 200 turns, or however long it takes to be quite sure the human player is way far ahead. Then see what the AI players failed to do, and then step backwards through the autoplays to see what good decisions they failed to make, and then finally some "inspiration" would occur as to why.

Personally, I think the total rewrite of the tech tree is more likely to be the reason, rather than a few lines of changes in how units are loaded/unloaded, but it will take some work to figure out.

I think its hard to blame the tech tree changes since the AI won't settle even once it has all the early tech.

Possible fixes include:
a) Taking the crystals requirement away from hover transports (if they still have it)
b) Changing scout thopter AI to transport rather than scout, and change it so some civs start with scout thopter rather than hawk thopter
c) Adding ability of settlers to enter desert waste tiles (the mod used to have that a while back).
d) Making the suspensors tech a requirement for more of the midgame techs, or increase its AI weighting? (Only way I can see tech tree changes being relevant.)

For what it's worth my 2 cents: Playing warlord on a "standard" map (which I think is quite huge, but okay) I was excited to see that the AI IS really building Spice improvements - I'm not sure if the AI is "good" because I'm a lousy player (warlord IS my difficulty level) but to see it using the idea of this mod (the spice must flow), made me happy. Good job! the AI's had (after two hours of playing) around 5 bases each, only the Atreides had only 2 (they lost one to the smugglers). For me (the human) it was a bit "overwhelming" in the beginning, because there were SO many tech options, but after I got 2 settlers for free (goody hut), it was easier. ;) next time I start on a small world with 6-7 AI's to see if war "works" better. one minor critique: the wind mill (building) gives +1 water, but only if you have a late game tech. Maybe this should be written somewhere ("gives +1 with tech xy"). Aside of that I really like that in the civilopaedia there is either a text or a "this is a stub article" - this is much better, than the "TXT_UNIT_..." which is seen in other mods. Oh one other thing: the sound. Did I do something wrong? in the middle of the game (after "you reach another era") the renaissance music from vanilla is played (church songs) this is a bit annyoing. I suppose I made something wrong with the sound extra package? well after all: great mod, I really like it. :)

I recommend playing on Small archipelago maps with ~8-9 civs.

Which building do you mean by "windmill"? The Turbine? Or the Windtrap?
Windtrap gives water bonus right from the start, and then gets another +1 water from sandfarms.

Oh one other thing: the sound. Did I do something wrong? in the middle of the game (after "you reach another era") the renaissance music from vanilla is played (church songs) this is a bit annyoing. I suppose I made something wrong with the sound extra package?

If you install the Music Pack (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=332729) I created, you should have Dune music through all eras - apart from the religion spreading music which I'm going to change once we have implemented the new religion design. I'm hoping that this Music Pack with become replace the sound add on linked in the welcome thread.

Which building do you mean by "windmill"? The Turbine? Or the Windtrap?
Windtrap gives water bonus right from the start, and then gets another +1 water from sandfarms.

the building is called "city wind trap" - according to the civilopaedia, it doesn't give a bonus.

the Fremen got another building called "wind trap" (has another picture also), replacing the Qnat which gives +2 water +2 health.

the improvement wind trap works fine.

regarding the size - I think "small" is still quite big and 8-9 civ's would be a good recommendation (thanks).
I will try tiny with 6 civ's.

@Deliverator
thanks a lot for the link, I have not seen this, and used the one in the welcome thread.
I suppose it's excactly what I searched for. :goodjob:

Ah, you're playing quite an old version then. The city windtrap version no longer exists.

See this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8409174&postcount=261) for the links to install the latest version.

ah okay :D - this time I've read the welcome thread till the end, and now I've installed 1.4, patch 1.4.8, art patch, music patch and benegesserit.mp3.
Ready to go ;) thanks a lot!

and btw. WOW! first look = great!

I compared the tech costs of DW vs vanilla. There is no huge difference, until you get near the top end of the tree. I have attached a spreadsheet which shows the average tech cost per tier. For both, it increases from tier to tier at about the same rate; there are several tiers where the DW increase is "lumpy", while the vanilla increase is always "smoother". Still, the average costs are similar.

I added a column which shows the cumulative cost; that is, if you researched every tech at each tier, how many total beakers you have spent. Again at the lower levels it matches closely; actually DW is usually ahead by a little.

The main place where there is a significant difference is at tier 16 and above; DW has only 7 techs while vanilla has 20. Since these are expensive techs, this changes the cumulative cost quite a lot.

In conclusion, I don't think we need to rebalance tech tree costs.

I do think we need to rebalance early water availability and reduce the total commerce available. Both of these will reduce the number of beakers available and effectively slow down the tech tree. This does not directly help with the perception of lack of expansion by the AI. More work is needed on these points.

I compared the tech costs of DW vs vanilla. There is no huge difference

There is however a huge difference in the potential economy size.
In Dune you have:
a) spice corp, which can easily be providing an extra 40 commerce+ or so in your capital, which gets multipled by all your boosters.
b) higher tile yields, particularly in the early game, and particularly of food yields from only a few tiles, which make specialist economies much easier to support
c) Bigger economy bonuses from civics, with either specialist economy (meritocracy and faufreluches) or cottage economy (private property + planned economy)
d) High bonus food yields from greenhouse and water refinery buildings.

So tech costs need to be higher than in vanilla to have a similar progression, with the higher commerce amounts.
And many people feel that vanilla tech progression goes a bit too fast, hence why many other mods like FFH have slower tech rates.

I think I would rather increase settler costs and reduce the bonuses from greenhouse and water silo than reducing the prevalence of water sources significantly, but I'd also be happy to leave tech costs for now and experiment with growth reductions instead.
We want a city in any given place (since the AI is bad at city placement and tends to fill up all land tiles with cities) to be at least moderately viable, so I think that changing bonus placement isn't the best way to go.

I'd also be fine with pushing Deep wells back later in the tech tree, which would also help slow early water.

What do you think about the viability of my suggestion in AH104?

I was not trying to say there is no problem, I was saying that among the possible suggestions, increasing the tech costs does not seem like the best solution.

I would much rather reduce the water benefit from groundwater and windtraps early, to make less water available and slow growth. If your early cities grow fast because there is plenty of water, then it doesn't feel like Dune.

For example, suppose we make the following changes:

* Decrease windtrap from +2 water to +1. You already get a +1 water for windtraps at Sand Farms tech, which is only tier 6, so I don't even think we need to add another bonus anywhere.
* Currently shallow well, deep well, aquabore give +3, +5, +7 water. We could reduce it to +2, +3, +4. Or even stronger, to +1, +2, +3 and give a +1 bonus somewhere deep in the tech tree.

* Decrease windtrap from +2 water to +1. You already get a +1 water for windtraps at Sand Farms tech, which is only tier 6, so I don't even think we need to add another bonus anywhere.
* Currently shallow well, deep well, aquabore give +3, +5, +7 water. We could reduce it to +2, +3, +4.

This is definitely worth trying. Or maybe +2/+3/+5.

AH100. Remove world is round bonus
Duplicate of AH23. Yes, you have requested it before, but it is not fixed. You can tell by either searching for the number in the release notes, or looking in the current issue spreadsheet.
AH93. The requirements for cultural border expansion are weird; quite different from vanilla.
I agree, but it is not clear how to fix completely. Somebody has added a lot of different game speeds, like about 10 different speeds. For each speed, and each city ring distance, you need a culture threshold, and it should scale nicely across all the speeds. For vanilla, normal speed, the thresholds are 10, 100, 500, 5000, 50000. For DW, normal speed, the thresholds are 23, 110, 331, 2856, 3556. So it takes only 3556 culture instead of 50000 to get radius 7. DW goes on to give radius 8-10 with 8561, 54610, 69610. These numbers seem really random. I suppose somebody had a program to generate the 10 different speeds and 10 different radius values. I can fix it for normal speed, but scaling it across all the speeds seems complicated.

Any thoughts on how we should fix this one? One obvious possibility is to just put back the vanilla XML file, which would give the vanilla speed choices and culture thresholds.

AH103. I suggest you significantly increase the time taken to clear salt, so that settling in a salt pan takes a long time to get a decent city, like settling in jungle does in vanilla.

In vanilla, it takes 4 turns for a worker to clear one square of jungle. For DW, the time required is the same. Should we make it take longer than jungle clearing?

looking in the current issue spreadsheet.

Sorry, I forgot that I saw it in the current issue spreadsheet rather than the changelog. My bad.

Any thoughts on how we should fix this one? One obvious possibility is to just put back the vanilla XML file, which would give the vanilla speed choices and culture thresholds.

I'm guessing that the intention was to allow for slightly larger cultural borders to help encompass more spice (and to account for the generally larger distance between cities thanks to the island-based script), and I quite like that, but I think that to radius 6 and 7 come too early, so maybe we can have a compromise.

Why don't we take, at normal speed, 15/110/400/4000/10000/30000/50000, and then scale these for other speeds by the same relative scaling factors as the vanilla ones use.
(So eg if vanilla is 10/100/500 on normal and 6/60/300 on quick and 20/200/1000 on epic, then we can make them 9/66/240/2400/ etc. for quick, and 30/220/800/8000/etc for epic.


In vanilla, it takes 4 turns for a worker to clear one square of jungle. For DW, the time required is the same. Should we make it take longer than jungle clearing?

Sorry, its been so long since I've played vanilla. Its longer in FFH I think? And in previous versions of civ jungle clearance is a big hassle.
I think I'd increase it to 6 or 8 turns at least, but this is a relatively minor issue.

Also, part of the issue is that the tech for clearing it just comes so early that it is never really a binding constraint - maybe we should push the tech requirement back, maybe to sand farms or something?

I'm guessing that the intention was to allow for slightly larger cultural borders to help encompass more spice (and to account for the generally larger distance between cities thanks to the island-based script), and I quite like that, but I think that to radius 6 and 7 come too early, so maybe we can have a compromise.

You are assuming there was a design decision behind this, which I doubt. My suggestion was to just put back the vanilla file, and I am not sure I understand the difference between your proposal and mine.

You are assuming there was a design decision behind this, which I doubt. My suggestion was to just put back the vanilla file, and I am not sure I understand the difference between your proposal and mine.

Always possible :-)
My proposal is basically to put back the vanilla file, but to reduce some of the costs at the upper end and add another range or two.

So if vanilla normal speed has thesholds of 10, 100, 500, 5000, 50000, then instead we could have (for example) thresholds of 15, 110, 400, 4000, 10000, 30000, 50000.

This would increase the cultural area covered by cities relative to vanilla, and this is desirable because deserts contain spice which must be in your territory for you to work, whereas in vanilla there is no real gain from cultural control of large stretches of ocean.

Again though, its not a major thing, reverting to vanilla would also be fine.

I have some theme-related issues that I've come across during the art work I've been looking at around the tech tree and buildings. I'll put issue codes against them although some are quite vague.

DV2. One of the things that is important in a tech tree is that the techs are conceptually different and clearly defined. A couple of examples of this not being the case are Spice Industry/Desert Industry/Industrialism and Water Conservation/Water Discipline. I think there is not an obvious distinction between these techs. When you are trying to find art for things, items where there is not a clear conceptual distinction tend to stand out.

DV3. Also, there are some techs where the items enabled by that tech seem arbitrary. For example, Internment Camps (which I'm not a fan of as a name - can't imagine the Atreides having them) enables Elite Bladesmen. It would be better to pick a new name that could be resonsible for both Elite Bladesmen and Prison Camps.

DV4. Theme-wise I think the Golden Path should swap places with Kwisatz Haderach. The Golden Path would not have come about with out Paul's insights post-KH. I know we don't have many effects for either yet, but in terms of chronology I think we have them the wrong way around.

(I still feel that there could be a stronger Dune theme to the tech tree overall. Most of this could simply come from some more appropriate and thematic renamings.)

DV5. A big area I feel is weak is Wonders. The list of Wonders is decidedly underwhelming. The few that I like theme-wise are mostly the ones Ahriman renamed using bits from the Dune Appendix. Even some of those are just seeds of ideas that need to evolve. Too many of the Wonders are really obvious renames of vanilla wonders. I would happily see us strip the wonders right down to the handful that have a decent concept and then add in new ones that have strong gameplay roles AND strong theme.

DV6. The same conceptual similarity issue that is happening with techs is also happening with buildings. What is the different between an Automated Factory and a Robotic Factory? It's hard to say. When you have two things that are conceptually identical in the mod, it effectively devalues both. This kind of thing is sure to confuse people.

DV7. There are two many buildings that begin with Spice - Spice Complex, Spice Foundry, Spice Purifier, Spice Factory - and that is on top of the Refinery which I presume processes Spice. Who'd have thought that making Spice was such a convoluted process?

DV8. The Wonders beginning Intergalactic are cheesy, unthematic nonsense and we need to put the David Lynch Museum to rest. Can we strip the Wonders back some and design some new ones?

DV8. Can we address the Qanat building vs Qanat improvement situation? I'm torn. Since a Qanat is just a canal the improvement makes sense - although the graphic is high on my list for replacement. On the other hand, the Qanat building has the Aqueduct graphic which I like - but on balance I don't like the +2 health function. I'd probably say rename the building to something else that might provide a health benefit - Moisture Seals perhaps although that's not really a building.

DV9. We need better names for the Eras. Even Birth of Arrakis isn't that appropriate with the vague post-apocalyptic backstory. I quite like just using single words perhaps starting with Survival and going on from there...

DV2
Yes, there are techs that are basically Industry level 1, Industry level 2, industry level 3 that do similar things.
If you need art, I'd pick a simple motif like a hammer and then have the higher level ones have graphics with more of them. So level 1 has 1 hammer, level 2 has 2 hammers, level 3 has 3 hammers.
Water conservation/tranportation/discipline are similar, but all allow quite different things here.

DV3
Lets discuss any arbitrary things on a case by case basis.
To some extent I did have to build the tree and then assign units to it.
But the intent with Interment camps was to capture some of the whole nasty-environment-makes-good-soldiers theme present in Dune (Salusa Secundus is nasty, and so makes tough Sardaukar; Dune is nasty so makes tough Fremen). The idea was that you have prison camps that provide recruiting grounds for really badass dudes.
I also made the tech optional; you don't *have* to research internment camps, if you want to play a role-played game.
Keep in mind of course that in Dune at least, the Atreides are still pretty nasty dudes in terms of internal security; a lot of their benevolent reputation comes from having a fantastic propaganda corps.

DV4
The problem here is that in my design, Golden Path is a religion founded by that tech. The tech and religion founding represents the creation of this as a goal, not a fulfillment of the goal.
Basically trying to implement stasis rather than Jihad.

So the tech can't come *too* late, and you have to be able to beeline it from the midgame. There is no point in a religion that is only founded by one of the very last techs of the game.

The Kwizatz Haderach tech currently does nothing, its just a placeholder from the old spiritual victory, I don't really care what happens to it.

I am happy for techs to be renamed for better flavor, as long as it is still obvious from their name what they do. For example, I like Caste Systems tech giving Faufreluches civic.
There is still the Dune flavor of Faufreluches, but it is still obvious to non-Dune experts what the tech does.

I was also trying to keep as many tech names similar to the old ones as possible (though I cut many of the ones that didn't make much sense, like Ampoliros, which is like a legendary flying dutchmen myth, not a technological innovation) to help ease the change.

DV5
I agree that wonders are underwhelming, and many are very underpowered (late game wonders that just give +50% culture for many many hundreds of hammers?).
I tried to cull the ones I *really* didn't think would fit, but I didn't really feel that I had a design brief to redesign those too, so I didn't want to tread on any more toes than I already was by redesigning the tech tree... and the civics and religion, and combat units. I try and keep the pre-existing design whenever possible. I'm not even on this mod team officially :-)

DV6
See my comments here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=331900
These need to be merged with the technocracy religion, and there should only be one, the robotic/automated are too similar in function.

DV7 and 8, agreed.
Honestly, I think Wonders really need a total redesign, thinking about what kinds of wonders might be useful/thematic rather than just renamed vanilla clones.

DV8
Someone had an alternative name for the Qanat city building, I don't remember what it was though. I think Qanat makes more sense as an improvement, though its such an incredibly weak one that it really isn't worth building.

DV9
Agreed.

I have spent today fixing a few of the small, new bugs reported by Ahriman, and also playing a couple of games manually to focus on the AI. I have played manually while keeping an autosave every 20 turns. By turn 120, it is obvious that I am far ahead; so I copy out the autosaves, and then go back and try to figure out what the AI is missing.

I do not have any smoking guns, but I can see that the AI is building settlers and then failing to send them out, even across pure land. I have started this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=334608) on the BBAI subforum to try and understand why. If anybody has any ideas, please let me know. I have the set of save games. But it is based on my locally changed xml files beyond 1.4.8. You could load the games (I have not added or deleted any units, techs, etc) but the exact behavior would be different. You can follow the steps I followed to create your own set of save games if you are interested.

DV2. One of the things that is important in a tech tree is that the techs are conceptually different and clearly defined ... I still feel that there could be a stronger Dune theme to the tech tree overall. Most of this could simply come from some more appropriate and thematic renamings ... DV7. There are two many buildings that begin with Spice ... DV9. We need better names for the Eras.

I agree. As you observed, your points are vague, and the hard part is coming up with specific better names. Please suggest.

DV5. A big area I feel is weak is Wonders ... Too many of the Wonders are really obvious renames of vanilla wonders ... The Wonders beginning Intergalactic are cheesy, unthematic nonsense and we need to put the David Lynch Museum to rest. Can we strip the Wonders back some and design some new ones?
Honestly, I think Wonders really need a total redesign, thinking about what kinds of wonders might be useful/thematic rather than just renamed vanilla clones.

Actually *all* of the wonders are renames of the vanilla wonders. One of my earlier building spreadsheets contains the from-to mapping. At most 5% of the effects are different, and these changes appear to be the result of a random number generator. So I do not agree that wonders need a *re* design, I think they need a *design*. Please suggest.

We have a paper religion redesign which I have not been able to implement, and we know that promotions also need a redesign. So we can certainly add wonders onto the list.

But the intent with Interment camps was to capture some of the whole nasty-environment-makes-good-soldiers theme present in Dune

How about naming it Conditioned Fighters or Seasoned Warriors, or some combination of these?

On other tech re-names - I'll have a think and try to come up with some detailed suggestions. Same for the Eras.

So I do not agree that wonders need a *re* design, I think they need a *design*.

OK, whoever gets there first should open up a new thread for brainstorming new Wonders. It might be me once I sort out a few more art things. I think the Religions and Promotions are higher priority though.

I agree the Qanat improvement is weak, not sure whether we should change it somehow or scrap it. Interestingly, the AI does use them quite a bit when on the poorer Rugged terrain - see here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=325262&page=18). So it seems useful in some circumstances.

I confirm David's observed AI lack of settling behavior.

How about naming it Conditioned Fighters or Seasoned Warriors, or some combination of these?

Maybe.... but the problem here is the implication of causality. A technology name like this seems to imply that a technology which means you have tough guys leads to the ability to build prison camps. Whereas in reality the logic is the other way around; building the camps lets you get training for tough guys.
How about "Labor camps" or "Harsh training programs" or something.

I may or may not have time for Wonder design, agreed we can create a new thread and go from there.

Interestingly, the AI does use them quite a bit when on the poorer Rugged terrain

The AI *uses* it, but not effectively. A Qanat rugged tile gives 1 water, 1 hammer. So the tile doesn't even pay for its own worker (who drinks 2 water). You would be much better off using that worker as a specialist instead.
IMO the only logical use for the Qanat improvement as current is with terraformed tiles, so you can get a 3 food grassland. But even then building a cottage or turbine is probably better.
Otherwise its just handicapping the AI, who sees that it has a city low on food income, and so builds an improvement that yields food.

Harsh Conditioning?

I think we should scrap the Qanat improvement then, since it is not serving a purpose and potentially hampering the AI.

DV6. The same conceptual similarity issue that is happening with techs is also happening with buildings. What is the different between an Automated Factory and a Robotic Factory?

Let's change Robotic Factory and Ixian Robotic Factory to Computerized Research Center and Ixian Computerized Research Center, as suggested by Ahriman in this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8427186&postcount=3).

Are there any other specific examples of conceptual similarity in the buildings? I don't see any.

DV7. There are two many buildings that begin with Spice - Spice Complex, Spice Foundry, Spice Purifier, Spice Factory - and that is on top of the Refinery which I presume processes Spice. Who'd have thought that making Spice was such a convoluted process?

The Refinery doesn't have anything to do with spice; it is the vanilla Forge, except we don't have any mineral resources for an extra +1 happiness. The point is +25% hammers and an engineer specialist slot. We aren't using "workshop" for an improvement; do you prefer Workshop to Refinery?

Not sure where Spice Foundry came from in your list. There are a few buildings which generate +unhealth, so the Spice Purifier is there to remove all that. The Spice Factory is the vanilla Factory, which gives +hammers and more engineer slots. The Spice Complex is the vanilla Industrial Complex, with more engineer slots and a free engineer. For both of those we could put back the vanilla names if you prefer.

Harsh Conditioning?

Hmm, possibly.

do you prefer Workshop to Refinery?

I'd be ok with either, but Spice Refinery is the one thing from the list that really *does* need to be part of the process; you harvest raw spice and then refine it.

The spice foundry is currently like the vanilla ironworks, its the big hammer producing national wonder. I'd be fine with dropping the word spice from the names of a bunch of the others, industrial complex and factory sound fine.

Spice Refinery is the one thing from the list that really *does* need to be part of the process; you harvest raw spice and then refine it.

That is too bad, since we don't have one of those. I don't suppose you would consider that to be covered by the House Spice Firm building?

The spice foundry is currently like the vanilla ironworks, its the big hammer producing national wonder. I'd be fine with dropping the word spice from the names of a bunch of the others, industrial complex and factory sound fine.

Sorry, forgot that the dune-o-pedia separates out wonders. I'll make those two name changes, Spice Factory => Factory and Spice Complex => Industrial Complex.

Let's change Robotic Factory and Ixian Robotic Factory to Computerized Research Center and Ixian Computerized Research Center, as suggested by Ahriman in this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8427186&postcount=3).

Hm, nice try. Power can only affect certain things. It can affect the food, hammer and commerce yield, but not the culture, beakers yield. So the research center cannot give another +25% beakers with power.

Also, something is weird. In the same post Ahriman pointed out that the Ixian Automated Factory gives -2 happiness on the continent. The XML does not set this, but the pedia thinks it does. The new Computerized Research Center shows -2 happiness on the continent in the XML, but not in the pedia. Both of these seem like bugs in the text manager, so I will have to investigate.

So the research center cannot give another +25% beakers with power.

Damn... that sounded like it would have been cool; overclock the supercomputer for hot beaker action. Maybe have it give gold with power?


That is too bad, since we don't have one of those.

Well, we could re-re-name the Refinery to Spice refinery. But I am fairly indifferent.

Hm, nice try. Power can only affect certain things. It can affect the food, hammer and commerce yield, but not the culture, beakers yield. So the research center cannot give another +25% beakers with power.

Surely with some DLL/Python changes it is possible to achieve this. Alternatively, we can leverage the corporation mechanic. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=358)

Quoting myself: The core mechanic is that corporate branches produce a yield of food, hammers, gold, culture, science or espionage (with modding) dependent on the number of a bonus that that city has access to.

So you could produce research based on the Thinking Machines bonus this way.

Perhaps we can adapt some of the corporation code to make the behaviour we want.

Good point. I have a long established reflex that if certain things cannot be done with existing xml tags or python hooks, then it is impossible. Now that I have made changes in the sdk, almost nothing is impossible. Of course adding an xml tag and all the required software functions is a lot more work, but it's possible.