Starting up the feedback for the new version.

Fatal Python error on turn 2 (see picture).

Clicking through it 20 times makes it disappear, but it immediately reappears a second or so later.

Save attached as well.

*edit*
tried a few more starts, it seems to be the scout thopter that is causing this problem.

I still suggest we remove surface from being built on flatland; with turbines and solar farms, we no longer need them, and the AI has a tendency to just go slavery and mine everything, and slavery is a bit too strong early game with mines on every tile.

Does this happen on every game? If so then the install seems broken for you. I will back up my area, download the install exe and play from that.

Has anybody else on this thread downloaded? Did you have this problem or not?

What do you mean by "related to the scout thopter"? Do you mean, if you start as a civ which starts with a scout thopter then this problem appears, but if you start as another civ which does not have a scout thopter then it is OK?

Presumably the unit itself works, because the AI players would have them, even in games when you don't. If you have a game where you have no thopter, please ctrl-Z display the whole map and find an AI scout thopter to confirm. Then you might try giving yourself a scout thopter using WB and see if the problem starts happening.

I still suggest we remove surface from being built on flatland; with turbines and solar farms ... Did you add improvement construction on polar terrain?

One side benefit of having the bug spreadsheet is that all the unfixed bugs are listed there. I apologize for not fixing every item you have reported.

It may be unrelated to the scout thopter; it seems like it might be related to trying to move into a desert tile.

So I'm guessing there is a bug in the height-adjustment system?

Yes, the bug is happening every game, though I have only tried a few so far, as soon as a unit tries to move into desert tiles; whether worker or thopter.

One side benefit of having the bug spreadsheet is that all the unfixed bugs are listed there.
Sorry, forgot to check the sheet. My bad.

Here's another example; try moving the worker NE of castle caladan onto the desert to go mine the spice.

You don't have to send more testcases. It happens all the time, regardless of what unit you move, if either the original plot or the destination plot is a desert. I have verified that this happens with my original installation so it is not an installer problem. I have verified that it happens without the fpk file so it is not that either.

All I can say is, it does not happen in autoplay, and it has been a while since I have manually played a game. I will try backing out my recent changes until I hit something, but there is no GUI change which I have made.

Somehow the way that I build the dll is not correct. I have had this problem with the Fury Road mod; I updated it to 3.19 locally but it had a weird problem with the shader. I did not figure it out so I did not release it.

I have dropped back to the dll sent by koma13 on Sept 12. This does not contain any of my sdk fixes but it does allow the game to actually work. If you go back to my 1.5 release note, you will see I have changed some fixes to orange color, which are my local sdk fixes.

@ ahriman, if you have the install from koma from Sept 12 and you can do it, please pull out the dll file (only) from that and write over the 1.5 dll. Does this solve your problem? If you do not have the rar or you cannot easily pull out the dll, I have uploaded just the working dll to this link (http://jendaveallen.com/fury-road/CvGameCoreDLL-working.zip). Please confirm this is working for you.

@ koma13, in the 1.5 release I have put all the sources. I have also kept my broken dll separately at this link (http://jendaveallen.com/fury-road/CvGameCoreDLL-broken.zip). Could you please confirm that whenever you move a unit to/from desert using my dll, that you get this alert? Could you please confirm that with your dll, this problem does not occur? And finally, could you try building a dll from the sources in the 1.5 release and see if *you* build *my* sources, whether it works? If your compile works, I will give up sdk compiling forever.

I have uploaded a modified 1.5 with koma's dll to the download database so the download is available again.

@ ahriman, if you have the install from koma from Sept 12 and you can do it, please pull out the dll file (only) from that and write over the 1.5 dll. Does this solve your problem? If you do not have the rar or you cannot easily pull out the dll, I have uploaded just the working dll to this link. Please confirm this is working for you.

I quit Civ, downloaded the file at this link, unzipped it into the BtS/Mods/Dunewars/CvGameCoreDLL folder, loaded Dunewars, and reloaded one of my saves from above, and still got the same error.

I tried starting a new game, and still got the error.

I do find that the error happens for the first time in a game when I first try moving a unit into desert tiles.

Next, I will delete my dunewars mod folder, and redownload your modified 1.5 and test.

I quit Civ, downloaded the file at this link, unzipped it into the BtS/Mods/Dunewars/CvGameCoreDLL folder

Confusingly, cvgamecoredll.dll does not go into the cvgamecoredll folder. It goes into the assets folder. You will see a file with this name already there; please copy over the old file.

Well, I just renamed the old mod folder (to backup) downloaded your new modified 1.5; that seems to be working fine.

Do you want me to delete the new one, go back to the old one, and try installing the cvgamecoredll.dll into the assets folder?

Do you want me to delete the new one, go back to the old one, and try installing the cvgamecoredll.dll into the assets folder?

Thanks for the confirmation. I do not think there is any further experimentation I'd like you to do; I would really like koma to try building my sources, to see if my build environment is working or not.

Thank you also for the first post onto the modpack thread; please do put future discussion onto the modpack thread instead of here, to attract more new players due to an active visible thread.

please do put future discussion onto the modpack thread instead of here, to attract more new players due to an active visible thread.

I can do that, but are you sure you want to move everything from this forum into the thread? It could get messy.

Could you please confirm that whenever you move a unit to/from desert using my dll, that you get this alert?
Confirmed.

Could you please confirm that with your dll, this problem does not occur?
Confirmed.

And finally, could you try building a dll from the sources in the 1.5 release and see if *you* build *my* sources, whether it works?
I compiled your source code and getting the same error message as with your dll when entering desert terrain. I think there is some error in the sources.

KO1: I spotted a sandworm in polar coast terrain. :crazyeye:

I can do that, but are you sure you want to move everything from this forum into the thread? It could get messy.

I would like to have "1.5 feedback" in the modpack thread. We should maintain the "incremental patch" thread for developer discussion of staging patches and new versions. We should maintain the other special purppose threads for example on the unique abilities of the various civs.

So, if a detailed discussion starts on the modpack thread, we can recommend to use a new/existing thread here for more details. But having an active thread in the modpack forum will attract more people.

I compiled your source code and getting the same error message as with your dll when entering desert terrain. I think there is some error in the sources.

I do not know if that is good news or bad news. None of the changes I made have anything to do with help strings. I will back-out my changes one at a time to see what I find.

GREAT mod. The only thing I think should change is possibly the strength of blade men. It should be reduced as (with Infantry) you attack a city and you start w/ an advantage...

Well, its similar to vanilla swordsmen vs archers, except swordsmen don't ignore city walls. Maybe drop the bladesmen down to strength 5, and increase their city attack bonus to 20%?
6*1.1 = 6.6 -> 5*1.2 = 6

I do not know if that is good news or bad news. None of the changes I made have anything to do with help strings. I will back-out my changes one at a time to see what I find.

There's alot of weird hard coded stuff in the help string manager in the dll. If something it expects isn't there it might crash. It's been a long time since I messed with that code in my GNH mod, but I remember being surprised at all the functionality there that wasn't in the XML.

Some of the offworld trade requirements are still strange; in the early midgame I was able to buy a heavy scorpion, dragonfly hornet eagle thopter and suspensor cruiser. This when my highest level tech was tier8 (see savegame).



Also, the "launch" button and message is too small; this should be much more obvious, new players could easily miss it, I noticed it only because I knew to look for it.

Forgive me if this is in the wrong place, but I wasn't sure where to put it. Do you want recommendations (not exactly feedback) in the modpacks forum as well?

In any event, one of the tragically underutilized concepts in ALL of the civ 4 universe is the global council resolutions. In Dune Wars, somewhat ironically, I never get elected and so I do not not the full scope of resolutions. Based on the poor choices made by the AI (again, in every mod and base civ this is an obvious problem), there doesn't seem to be any unique resolutions. Just a few ideas:

1. Increase and/or decrease the global efficiency of terraforming (i.e. replicate the effect of adding or subtracting Reservoirs of Liet). This would, for example, allow a block of pro-terraformers to take control of the council and allow them to terraform faster.

2. Increase and/or decrease the financial bonus of each spice resource. If you design it so terraformers have significantly fewer available spice resources and the value of each spice resource is very high, it may make sense for them to reduce the global benefit.

3. Increase/decrease the cap on the number of homeworld units you can buy. Maybe increasing the cap means each unit should be more expensive, and vice versa. Thus, if you voted to increase the cap, you could recruit 50% more units but the cost per unit increase by 75%. Likewise, if you vote to decrease the cap, you could recruit 50% less units but their cost is also reduced by 50%. The thinking is that perhaps in the early game you would elect to reduce the cap so you can better afford the units, but as economies develop you could elect to either repeal the resolution, or even try to get the cap expanded...

4. Provide Combat 1 to all homeworld recruited units, but increase the cost of each unit by 25%.

5. Increase the global worker work rate by 25% but impose a flat 5% tax per turn.

6. Double the diplomatic effect of religion, but also provide a global 50-100% increase in trade route effect. In other words, much stronger trade with your religious brothers, but further alienation (and a likely loss of trade routes) with heathens.


Incidentally, I very much like the homeworld recruiting idea. I just think it would work better if the units available were unique. Each faction's primary source of their unique units should be the homeworld recruiting system. That is to say, it should be more credit efficient to buy them there; you can ensure this by making the hammer cost disproportionately high.
In addition to providing each civ's unique unit, the homeworld recruiting system could also provide a couple units not buildable but available to all. They should be clearly superior to the unit they replace, but should be very expensive and in limited supply. This would also have the effect of making the proposed resolutions above much more significant...

We haven't done anything with council resolutions. Partly because they are hard to code AI for, so that the AI intelligently votes for/against decisions.

1. Sounds interesting. Would probably be easy to AI code; get the leader to propose/vote for/against the resolution based on their civic.

2. This sounds harder, both because the benefit from a spice is from corporations (it would be hard to make a resolution change corporation yields) and because it would be h
Plus, it doesn't really make sense; the value of spice is determined by the demand for it in the rest of the galaxy, you can't really change that easily by passing a law. Unless they're taxing it I suppose.

3, 4 Might be possible, but hard to evaluate.

5. I don't quite understand this; what are you trying to represent here?
Hard to evaluate too.

6. How would passing a law change this?

I just think it would work better if the units available were unique.

We've taken most of the UUs out of the mod; I think we intend for factional UUs to show up in the homeworld ques.

We haven't done anything with council resolutions. Partly because they are hard to code AI for

I agree. These are good suggestions, but hard to do.

We've taken most of the UUs out of the mod; I think we intend for factional UUs to show up in the homeworld queues.

It is true that we took out almost all the UU/UB in 1.4 to focus on the basic gameplay with fewer units. At some point we should design and add UU/UB. However, the original suggestion is more; keldath had also suggested this. There could be offworld-*only* units. These could be either unique to a civ, or allowed to be purchased by any civ using a landing stage.

I am not sure when is the right time to design the UU/UB; I was hoping everything else would stabilize faster.

Well, now that I got familiar with the mod, which is quite an achievement I must say, as a long-standing Dune geek I may offer some fluff input you could possibly process for the betterment of future editions of the mod. Now, however, only the things I noticed from a simple Civ player's standpoint.

1. The Arrakis map has huge problems fitting in all the civs on smaller maps. There's an error notice appearing right before starting the game that points out a rare occurence of blah blah (the long number) which results in either elimination of me as civ (auto-defeat) or any of the others. Sometimes you also end up in a sand dune starting location with no access to the ground solid enough to found a city, or even on plain sand with no ability of a settler to move. Packed-up smaller maps also appear deprived of any resources that are not diamond, uranium, nitrates, groundwater, crystals, stravidium, little makers and sandtrouts (all of them in excess) - the crop generation could be more favourable for dune plants.

2. Diplomatic victory does not end the game. I just got the winning resolution passed and had to figure out other way to win.

3. The names of planets and star systems as cities on Dune, mixed up with other stuff, look pretty uncool. Why don't you give one source of city names to all and associate them with different civs' cities at random, the way barbarian cities are being named? There are plenty of atmospheric Dune names that are not associated with either party permanently, so there's no need to import names that do not fit, especially that all maps are 100% Dunish. Personally, I would feel much more enmeshed in Dune fluff if I saw more Harg Passes, Tuono Basins, Caves of Birds, Caves of Riches, Sihaya Ridges, Arsunts, Tsimpos, Windsacks and so forth.

4. Pics. Most of them are good, but I see a clear preference for Lynch's movie and Dune televised series. Why don't you exploit the neat set of pics from Dune CCG more (I saw only several through the game)? If you lack access, I may provide you with scans, I have most cards.

I hope my suggestions are of any use and merit to you.

Thanks again for the great experience this mod is!

Well, now that I got familiar with the mod, which is quite an achievement I must say, as a long-standing Dune geek I may offer some fluff input you could possibly process for the betterment of future editions of the mod. Now, however, only the things I noticed from a simple Civ player's standpoint.

Great! Thanks for the feedback!

1. The Arrakis map has huge problems fitting in all the civs on smaller maps.

Agreed. There is discussion on the sub-forum about replacing this mapscript altogether. Stay tuned!

2. Diplomatic victory does not end the game. I just got the winning resolution passed and had to figure out other way to win.

I have noticed that also in the past. I think the "Mastery" victory condition causes this. I play with this victory condition disabled and then the other victories work as they should. Do you have "Mastery" turned on?

3. The names of planets and star systems as cities on Dune, mixed up with other stuff, look pretty uncool. Why don't you give one source of city names to all and associate them with different civs' cities at random, the way barbarian cities are being named? There are plenty of atmospheric Dune names that are not associated with either party permanently, so there's no need to import names that do not fit, especially that all maps are 100% Dunish. Personally, I would feel much more enmeshed in Dune fluff if I saw more Harg Passes, Tuono Basins, Caves of Birds, Caves of Riches, Sihaya Ridges, Arsunts, Tsimpos, Windsacks and so forth.

Deliverator has worked on this a little for 1.5.1. Please take a look when that is released (or perhaps, if you want a stable release, 1.5.2 which is further into the future). One problem is that you need at least 20 names for each civ, which is 180 names, and it's hard to find that many. We would definitely like your input on this.

4. Pics. Most of them are good, but I see a clear preference for Lynch's movie and Dune televised series. Why don't you exploit the neat set of pics from Dune CCG more (I saw only several through the game)? If you lack access, I may provide you with scans, I have most cards.

Never played the game. There may be some small legal question, but this mod is not for profit, etc etc etc. If you feel comfortable, we would love to add more art. Please send any scans you can, or if there is already a site we could look at, please let us know. Not only people, but also buildings, units, etc art would be useful.

The names of planets and star systems as cities on Dune, mixed up with other stuff, look pretty uncool.
Deliverator has worked on this a little for 1.5.1. Please take a look when that is released (or perhaps, if you want a stable release, 1.5.2 which is further into the future).
Please look into the spoiler for the current list. If you would like to change some, please feel free. I will put it back into the proper XML format after.

House Atreides
Castle Caladan
Atreus
Serena
Cidrit
Paradan
Salusan
Armada Bluff
Sihaya
Habbanya Erg
Vorian
Habbanya Ridge
Pundi
Elecran
Coral Qem
Atreides Landing
Cala City
Sision
Pavonis
Agamemnon
Zocom
Krasna45
Dujec
Langley
Fort Zone
Taqwa
Iber
Waten
Biddi
Rotinom
Tatnem
Alaum
K'Lom
House Ordos
Executrix
Ammon
Canopus
Grumman
Sikun
Bela Tegeuse
Ophiuchus
Poritrin
Epsilon Alangue
Epsilon Ophiuchi
Alangue
Rossak
Alpha Leporis
Alpha Centauri A
Alpha Centauri B
Proxima
Alpha Piscium
Vivr
Messit
Waff
Scatt
Wi-Ed
Nadal
Aining
Layr
Kobsa
Hako
Mauhk
Hamulago
Bene Tleilax
Bandalong
Xerxes
Sufi
Xuttuh
Rodale
Richese
Butlerian
Tleilaxu
Parmentier
Romo
Sikun
Ophiuchi A
Bi-La Kaifa
Missiva
Varota
Butlerian
Scyte
Ithaca
Powind
Axlotl
Lusu
Sligs
Denol
Adn
Fremen
Sietch Tabr
Arrakeen
Carthag
Hagga
Arsunt
Hagga
Sihaya
Tuono Basin
Splintered Rock
Broken Land
Cave of Birds
Wind Pass
Minor Erg
Palmaries
Mt. Idaho
Habbanya Erg
Habbanya Ridge
Plastic Basin
Observatory Mt.
Chakobsa
House Corrino
Imperial Base
Gamma Waiping
Pyon
Eridani A
Sardauk
Chusuk
Delta Pavonis
Harmonthep
Bela Tegeuse
Tiberium
Habla
Elrood
Auroris
Saudik
Orcat
Talons
Zorca
Mammooth
Scrin
Nod
Avatar
Shadow Peak
Corrinos
Orcast
Fire Hook
Dye Landing
Philadelphia Uplink
Saudak
Blue Tib
Green Tib
Kane
Blue Zone
Ponop
Minim
Herber
Ace
House Harkonnen
Giedi City
Harko City
Barony
Dmitri
Perdition Shallows
Sorrows
Flint
Obsidian
Slave Pits
Forest Guard
Mount Ebony
Fort Ancient
Barren Land
Flat Tramway
Raven
Tundra
Ophiuchi
Metali
Port of Sacrifice
Para-Co
Paspar
Sider
Ritic
Pyon
Schla
Saad
Geidi-Minor
Bene Gesserit
Chapterhouse
Gero
Lampadas
Palma
Laoujin
Tahaddi
Sirat
Mantene
Karaman
Khalam
Ibad
Ibn Qirtaiba
Ayati
Crysti
Semut
Servok
Shai
Cach
Han
Conven
Gerrat
Iltug
Dakin
Zace
Opafire
Ornit
Loine
Range
Mu'Zein
Assassin's Peak
Rahif
Ghola
Angel Isle
Dark City
House Ix
Ix City
Technia
Zoi
Icanax
Xuttuh
Titan Xerxes
Rodale
Ixian Solido
Gammu Prime
Shere
Haploid
Nayla
Siona
Gholia
Murbella
Chomma
Zannar
Dekk
Holbar
Seck
Toll
Baltheg
Riss Kai
Sordel
Oranit
Ixtar
Xelleck
Xorix
Geroth
Sythe'b
Kolloth
Rakin
B'athor
Fellbarg
House Ecaz
Ecaz City
Elacca
Jarezi
Sula
Polz
Semus
Unis
Tenim
Cazaris
Fukan
Terecca
Steri
Quendris
Buquinta
Iadam
Resti
Futac
Shahin
Marac
Haric
Armandis
Vidalis
Shekanim
Poikas
Zaneba
Jerac
Nadim
Ericcas
Mul
Jahaccas
Chek
Anos
Ruson
Arrakeen
Tuek's Sietch
Pasty Mesa
Red's Pass
Chin Rock
Gara Kulon
Harg Pass
False Wall-S
False Wall-E
Chise
Der'Sap
Kustmi

I think the legal question is pretty irrelevant in this case. The game is long dead as is the company that released it, so it is only the artists themselves. I've tried to browse the net a bit in search for a good gallery of CCG Cards and the results are a bit unimpressive, so some serious scanning awaits me I guess. There are like over 660 cards in the game, so potentially a good art database, even though not all card pics are worthy of attention.

However, I found mostly sneak peeks like these (crappy resolution all of them, just for making pre-scan preferences):

http://karcianki.polter.pl/Dune-CCG-Galeria-kart-g1827
http://www.geocities.com/sherlockazulu/images.htm
http://dunepedia.wetpaint.com/page/Category%3A+Dune+CCG (click other options in submenu)
http://sihaya.altervista.org/cartedune2.htm

These are good:

http://www.randyasplund.com/browse/cards/dune.html - Randy Asplund's Dune gallery
http://markzug.com/dune/art-from-the-collectible-card-game/ - Mark Zug's

An unrelated material: Map from the boardgame, perhaps could be an inspiration in making a genuine Dune scenario map

http://www.dunefilmbook.com/graphics/board/DuneBoardorlok.jpg

Well, now that I got familiar with the mod, which is quite an achievement I must say, as a long-standing Dune geek I may offer some fluff input you could possibly process for the betterment of future editions of the mod.

Great. The more Dune geeks the better!

The names of planets and star systems as cities on Dune, mixed up with other stuff, look pretty uncool. Why don't you give one source of city names to all and associate them with different civs' cities at random, the way barbarian cities are being named? ... Personally, I would feel much more enmeshed in Dune fluff if I saw more Harg Passes, Tuono Basins, Caves of Birds, Caves of Riches, Sihaya Ridges, Arsunts, Tsimpos, Windsacks and so forth.

Agree completely. The current city lists are just made up lists of assorted Dune planets and related terms quite often.

david/koma/cephalo - is it possible to mod the sdk so that we have a single list of city names stored in GlobalDefines or something like that? I think the answer is yes, as I've seen Planetfall has different city name lists for ocean cities. Could someone do this? It is probably at the easier end of the SDK modding spectrum in my inexperienced estimation.

Other things that need some thought are:
1) We need a completely new list of decent Dune-themed wonders for the mod.
2) We need some more ideas for making factions play differently, unique units, unique buildings, unique mechanics.
2) We need to rename the Eras to something more appropriate.

Pics. Most of them are good, but I see a clear preference for Lynch's movie and Dune televised series. Why don't you exploit the neat set of pics from Dune CCG more (I saw only several through the game)? If you lack access, I may provide you with scans, I have most cards.

The reason we've used TV/film for the leaderheads is that images need to have a certain, resolution and crispness to look good. Taking stills from DVDs you can get a good sized source image without the issue of nasty JPEG compression artifacts which is common with internet sourced material. The CCG stuff looks really interesting though. Anything that you can provide we can potentially find a home for, particularly things that work as distinctive icons (which have to be 64x64 pixels). In the distant, distant future I would like to have Event pop-ups with images like some other mods have done.

Is there a list of cards from the CCG game anywhere? That could be a good source of ideas - wonders, unique units and buildings, etc.

The full spoiler cardlist is here: http://www.geocities.com/sherlockazulu/card_library.htm. I am a former hardcore Dune CCG player so may explain any mechanical puzzles from the cards which appear useful to you.

The city list: I am with deliverator on this - one list would be really good. It would reflect different factions slowly claiming geographical features of Dune rather than simply founding them. I will procure a list soonish, once you establish how it should be done - civ specific or general (naturally, the Fremen are easiest to support). Perhaps first cities for factions could be pre-selected. My ideas would be:

Atreides - Ducal Seat
Harkonnen - Dune Regency
Corrino - Selamlik
Sisterhood - Panoplia Propheticus
Fremen - Sietch Tabr

Ecaz, Ix, Tleilaxu and Ordos have no procedence of formal Dune presence in FH's books, so something should be made up.

The new things:

I'll give it some serious thought and be back with results.

Also, I think that more Dunish factions should be made playable civs, like Spice Miners, Water Sellers, Spacing Guild, Smugglers. The barbarians could be relegated to the role of Water Stealers of Jakarutu. ;) But do we really need barbarians with most of the wild and violent factions made playable? :D

The full spoiler cardlist is here.

Cool. There's a lot of great ideas coming from this list. For starters, I like Sisterhood Covenant for the Bene Gesserit unique resource discussed here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8463441&postcount=135), and I think we should replace Alia as a BG leader with Lady Margot Fenring. Alia could become a religious hero unit for the Qizarate religion and the Temple of Alia can be the shrine.

Water Stealers of Jakarutu

I'd actually like to see these guys as a playable civ using the name the Iduali or Cast-Out. Then you can have 'bad' Fremen and 'good' Fremen. One thing that makes them different from other Fremen is that they capture worms and sell them off world to the highest bidder. This could make a fun unique mechanic for them - capture a worm and get a hefty gold windfall.

We took the Guild out because it didn't feel right to have them a playable faction. The homeworld screen mechanic - paying the Guild for transporting your units - doesn't make sense if they are in the game.

Smugglers as a civ might be a possibility, but I think Water Sellers and Spice Miners are too vague and indistinctive.

Replacing Alia with Margot is a good idea, because at any given point of her life she was anything but a loyal BG Sis. I think the Goal should be to organise leaders according to periods of Dune timeline, covered by first three books as much as possible, at least for the factions that got coverage.

Atreides: Leto - Paul - Alia - Leto II

Harkonen: Vladimir - Glossu - Feyd

Corrino: Shaddam - Irulan - Vensicia - Farad'n

Fremen: Ramallo - Liet - Stilgar - Muad'Dib

Sisterhood: Margot - Gaius - Jessica

---

Water sellers, like Tuek's Smugglers, got pretty good coverage in original Dune book, Lingar Bewt mentioned by name. And it would be really cool to have them begin on original dune map (once it is made) sitting on the pole. Perhaps an independent, non-playable faction mechanics could be used with them for starters.

---

Jakarutu as separate faction is worth considering.

---

The Guild as faction is controversial, I admit.

---

Temple of Alia under the Quizarate is a very good idea.

for starters, I like Sisterhood Covenant for the Bene Gesserit unique resource

agreed, that sounds good.

In the distant, distant future I would like to have Event pop-ups with images like some other mods have done.

I am currently thinking about making something like this. Not only for events (we don't have...) - but also for hints, explaining game mechanics and introducing the dune universe. Maybe we can make some kind of personal advisor for each house, serving as a mentat for the player.

That could be a nice flavour addition - like the notification popups (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=215662&stc=1&d=1243519810) in Age of Discovery 2.

Events should be one of the last things we add to the mod after everything else is pretty much 'done'. That's what they did for FFH2 and the approach makes sense since events are basically flavourful icing on the cake rather than core to the mod.

The city list: I am with deliverator on this - one list would be really good.

I think each civ should have one carefully chosen capitol city name, and perhaps 2-3 other key cities which are closely associated with them in the books. These names will be used for the first few cities, and I think it is important for theme. This may not work for Ordos, but even so, I bet there are 1-2 names already associated with them from the games they were in. We should no longer use homeworlds since we have the homeworld screen now.

Regardless of how we distribute the names after that, we need about 180 names so each civ can have 20 without duplication. Given the list, we could randomly distribute them among the civs, with only xml changes. I am sure it is possible to make some kind of mod to rename the cities from one global list; but I am not sure how much additional benefit that has beyond just splitting up the list one time.

If the Dune experts can put together a list this long (please use the list a few posts above as a starting point) we can decide how to use it.

Let me start a separate thread on that.

AHR4
Improvement access a bit strange; I would vote for mines and windtraps only on mesa, and for allowing cottage, turbine and solar farm (or a melting lens) on polar.

Ice extractors are currently buildable on rugged/sink and badlands/sink, as are dew collectors? (they do nothing). And you can build mines in sinks. These should be limited to mesa IMO.

Shallow wells and plantations are sometimes buildable in sinks (they do nothing).

AHR5
Mesas seems to really be mesa/rugged.
They are giving a 55% defense bonus and very long improvement build times.

AHR6
Graben gives 2h1c
I would reduce it so that it just gives 1h1c. So either remove the +1 hammer from sinks, or reduce graben down to just 1c yield.
It will still be better then normal rock/badlands.
Otherwise:
a) its too strong
b) changing it into plains/grassland isn't really a bonus.

AHR7
Related thought; how about scrub forest from terraforming only appears on grassland/plains in a sink?

So remove the hammer bonus from sinks. Then:
graben/sink = 1h1c
plains sink = 1f
grassland sink = 2f
plains sink with scrub forest = 1f1h
grassland sink with scrub forest = 2f1h

AHR8
Graben/sink costs 2 movement points, it should only cost 1.

OK, here's the state of play as I see it.

1) The experimental patch 1.5.1 is available here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8481268&postcount=373).
2) The latest version of Cephalo's Arrakis.py v0.51 is available and included in 1.5.1.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=228766&d=1253645034

This Arrakis mapscript is the one we need the onus of the play-testing to fall on. You can also use the Dunipelago (NOT Archipelago) mapscript to test out how the new terrain set is working, but try Arrakis first!

We should work towards a more polished 1.5.2 which refines the new terrain and includes a solid version of Arrakis.py. Whether or not we continue to support/refine Dunipelago will depend on how good we can make Arrakis.py. Bear in mind that Cephalo's mapscripts in the past have had customizable parameters, such as More Islands/Less Islands, etc. If the mapscript has a few parameters that can be tweaked then one mapscript will probably be enough to keep things interesting.

Ideally, functional issues with the terrain, improvements, bonuses, etc should go in this thread and the Arrakis.py thread can just be feedback for Cephalo to improve the layout of the tiles, shape of landmasses, etc.

This latest version 0.51 of Arrakis.py should be ready for serious playtesting on a 'Standard' size map. It's a continents based map rather than archipelago, more like what we see on the fictional maps.

OK, here's the state of play as I see it.

1) The experimental patch 1.5.1 is available here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8481268&postcount=373).
2) The latest version of Cephalo's Arrakis.py v0.51 is available here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=228699&d=1253589236). The Arrakis.py mapscript should over-write the 1.5.1 Arrakis.py in the PublicMaps folder.

I agree. But fortunately the 0.51 version of Arrakis.py is already included in 1.5.1, as mentioned in the release note. I was actually in the middle of uploading 1.5.1 when 0.51 hit, so I canceled the upload and rebuilt 1.5.1 with 0.51 in it.

Ah, didn't realise. I'll re-edit the post.

AHR9
Sink/graben gives 25% defense bonus, it should give zero.

I love the new quad art.

AHR10
Harvester improvements aren't being properly removed when the spice under them decays if the tile is still being worked.

DV20
Goody Huts should not appear on Dunes (only apparent on Arrakis.py).

AHR11
Fremen should probably start with desert survival rather than mysticism.

Could you temporarily upload the patch to an alternative mirror? I apparently just cannot download from the current server.

KO10 I can't select hawk thopters and blademen at the same time. :confused:
KO11 events (Atreides draft, spice blows, homeword units, ...) should be scaled to game speed

I have patch 1.5.1.

AHR12
Terraforming is broken in 1.5.1; I have been Arrakis paradise for 50+ turns with 2 catchbasins and not a single tile has changed.

@Fenring: Here's a mirror link for 1.5.1 (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?vdytk0hmmdm).

@Fenring: Here's a mirror link for 1.5.1 (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?vdytk0hmmdm).

Thank you. This is the third person who reported being unable to get to the files on my webserver. Yet, you can always get to them. I wish I had some way to figure out the problem. I exchanged like 10 PM's with one person, and then it turned out the next day he could access the site no problem. And the site was never actually down.

The joys of internet routing... Well only a couple of people have used the mirror link for 1.5 that I put up in the installation thread so I'm guessing the issue isn't widespread.

Muchos gracias!

First impression of 1.5.1.- new Arrakis map randomiser gives really good results on many different map sizes. Still when you pack 9 civs into Duel map (yep, I am a masochist of Deity-level deathmatches) you do not get any plants whatsoever (a plight of all duel random maps in Civ 4 I played), but neither does it crash nor does it pop you up stuck on a dune in the middle of nowhere. The map generator gives landmasses that are really fanciful and dunish: the donut is rarely closed, it has one to several outlets to open desert from inner circle, small outcroppings often appear on perimeter. The differentiation of levels between mesa, sink and graben is very cool, it produces real gorges. Although in most cases the polar area disappears enitrely, probably due to consisement. The bug I noticed is that the destination marker does not coincide vertically visually with the map grid, it's moved to roughly half of the lower one, so it's easy to misclick and move where you don't want to.

On minus side - my first game after 30 instanses of map generation got nastily hung after 10 minutes of gameplay during the switch of turns. It was randomly happening to me under 1.5 too.

On minus side - my first game after 30 instanses of map generation got nastily hung after 10 minutes of gameplay during the switch of turns. It was randomly happening to me under 1.5 too.

Do you know how to turn on python exceptions and look into PythonErr.log? If not I can explain. When you see a hang, I would like to know if this is due to a python exception. Also, if you set autosave to a frequent rate, you will have an autosave from 1-2 turns before the hang; you can reload one of the autosaves to see if it is reproducible, and then post the savegame so we can find the reason.

Muchos gracias!

First impression of 1.5.1.- new Arrakis map randomiser gives really good results on many different map sizes. Still when you pack 9 civs into Duel map (yep, I am a masochist of Deity-level deathmatches) you do not get any plants whatsoever (a plight of all duel random maps in Civ 4 I played), but neither does it crash nor does it pop you up stuck on a dune in the middle of nowhere. The map generator gives landmasses that are really fanciful and dunish: the donut is rarely closed, it has one to several outlets to open desert from inner circle, small outcroppings often appear on perimeter. The differentiation of levels between mesa, sink and graben is very cool, it produces real gorges. Although in most cases the polar area disappears enitrely, probably due to consisement. The bug I noticed is that the destination marker does not coincide vertically visually with the map grid, it's moved to roughly half of the lower one, so it's easy to misclick and move where you don't want to.


For now, I haven't even looked at duel size. I'd like to get comfortable with standard size first and then I will look to the needs of the others. Duel size maps are always really difficult to make work even for 2 players. You wan't 9 players on duel size? You crazy!! I must make map script for these crazy people!!

I agree that you should concentrate on standard.

I have 1.5.2 negotiating tech trades seems to be causing a crash.

Take the attached savegame; Ix proposes a trade. Try to negotiate the deal, and offer both your techs and say "what will you give me for this". He offers both his techs and world map. Accept the trade. -> CTD.

Alternatively, just accept the deal, end turn, and next turn someone else approaches you; try negotiating and again the negotiated deal causes CTD.

*edit*
It seems to be happening from "propose a deal" too. Accept the initial one for one deal, then offer them your tech and ask "what would you give me for this". They offer a tech, and their map, accept it -> CTD.

(Or maybe its from map trading?)

*edit2*
It seems to be from map trading.

OK. It could be that something graphical on the map is causing a crash when it is revealed by the World Map trade.

Try renaming the folders assets/art/terrain/resources and assets/art/improvement/harvester to something else (e.g. resources1 and harvester1) temporarily and then see if the CTD happens.

It could be the changed bonus graphics that a causing an issue.

Actually its assets/art/structures/improvements/harvester .

I renamed both those folders, and the CTD still happens on map trade.

I'm getting a replicatable CTD (running 1.5.2).
Take the attached save; take the falcon thopter in the northeast of my Corrino empire, and move it east onto the hill tile with the windtrap in BTl territory. Instant CTD.

*edit*
entering worldbuilder to try to see what is around that tile also causes instant CTD.
It sounds like it must be an art issue.

*edit2*
the fact that I'd already explored that area suggests that its not a terrain issue, but rather something with a unit or improvement or city art or something?

I'm getting a replicatable CTD (running 1.5.2)...entering worldbuilder to try to see what is around that tile also causes instant CTD.
It sounds like it must be an art issue.

I can reproduce this from your save game. I have never previously seen a case where just entering WB causes a CTD. I have been having a problem recently myself which I was blaming on MAF, but I guess yours is the same as mine. I often set a game on autoplay and then minimize it, and come back in half an hour to look at what happened. It happens very often that the game is sitting there waiting for me, but as soon as I alt-tab to reactivate it, then the game gives a CTD. I guess it is trying to display whatever art that was, and failing the same way your save fails on displaying that territory.

I am not sure how to debug. I ran civcheck with some optional flags to display more "possibly missing" things, which also shows many errors with vanilla. It showed some stuff, but nothing remarkable. Does anybody have some suggestions about how to debug? If I remove units from the game the save won't be loadable. There are no obvious missing art files. I cannot display the map, to do some usual tricks like trying to remove buildings which may be causing problems.

Some more info: whatever it is is probably something generally accessible to multiple factions. I would get the save game when I tried to trade maps with Ix, when I tried moving into the BTl territory (post 61) or when I tried joining a Permanent alliance with Ecaz.

I've noticed the same thing with autoplays - does the same thing happen with a clean 1.5?

Some process of elimination on the art would be good - I agree it seems like an art error.

I never noticed it in 1.5 or 1.5.1, but I didn't play them enough to find out.

If there is a full list of art changes somewhere, I can mention which ones I know I have built myself, and so we could rule them out.

I can reproduce this from your save game. I have never previously seen a case where just entering WB causes a CTD. I have been having a problem recently myself which I was blaming on MAF, but I guess yours is the same as mine. I often set a game on autoplay and then minimize it, and come back in half an hour to look at what happened. It happens very often that the game is sitting there waiting for me, but as soon as I alt-tab to reactivate it, then the game gives a CTD. I guess it is trying to display whatever art that was, and failing the same way your save fails on displaying that territory.


hey guys, been catching up on your recent work, everything is so awesome,

had some exp with wb related ctds, its probably some art file that causes it, probably some resource, try to roll back a version and track it.

cheers guys.

I never noticed it in 1.5 or 1.5.1, but I didn't play them enough to find out.

If there is a full list of art changes somewhere, I can mention which ones I know I have built myself, and so we could rule them out.

The easiest way to find all the art changes is to open the zipfile deliverator has sent, and look for which assets/art/*/* directories are there. There are four new units: devastator, missile launcher, swordmaster, sardaukar legionary. All four of these show up OK in the pedia and I can place and move them OK in game. Almost all of the bonuses have new nifs and some new skins. All of them look ok in the pedia except diamond, which is blank in the pedia. Your save game shows diamonds in your home area fine. I did not try individually placing each bonus in game.

When I see the crash, usually I have done ctrl-z to see the whole map at the start of the game, but I get the crash when I try to redisplay the map after some long autoplay. So I do not think it is quite as simple as a completely broken art file. It might be a particular bonus in combination with a particular improvement, which would not show up in the initial map.

In your save game, I have driven that thopter straight south, then around to the east and finally north. The area which causes the crash is apparently quite small, directly east of your thopter. I wish we could see what is there. Do you have an autosave from earlier in the same game, which might not crash when displaying there?

Well it makes no sense to me right now. I've changed the paths in the XML for Bonus, Feature, Improvement, Terrain and Unit to be a non-existant directory so that everything shows the default red blobs and pink terrain. Still the savegame crashes when the whole map is revealed. Weird.

devastator, missile launcher, swordmaster, sardaukar legionary

I have built the missile launcher, swordmaster and Sardaukar without any problems, and there wouldn't be any devastators in the game yet.

Do you have an autosave from earlier in the same game, which might not crash when displaying there?

I have the turn0 autosave (attached).

If its a resource, could it be a resource that was only revealed through some tech?
The ctrl-z just removes fog of war, whereas entering worldbuilder also reveals all the resources.

I thought the only resources revealed through tech were stradvium (which I shouldn't be able to see yet from moving the thopter) and crystals (which work fine).
And besides, revealed resources should show up even under fog of war, so I guess it can't be that.

Could it be one of the city buildings? Maybe there is a city there with some weird building. Is there any variation in building art across factions?

Maybe it is a building - that is one thing I haven't tried yet.

It can't be a resource; the turn0 autosave opens fine in world builder.

It must be a building.

*edit*
I just placed every building in the game in my size 1 capital in the autosave in worldbuilder and none of them crashed worldbuilder.

Is there an interaction between geography and buildings? Or population size and buildings?

Doesn't look like it is a building. I removed them all and I still get a CTD using ctrl-z or worldbuilder. Is it the windtrap 2 tiles of east of the Corrino thopter that triggers the crash? That doesn't seem to cause a problem for me, but I still get a CTD using ctrl-z.

I also removed the heightmap and the terrain so it doesn't look like anything to do with that.

Is it the windtrap 2 tiles of east of the Corrino thopter that triggers the crash?

I don't think so: you can see the windtrap through the fog, and trading maps with other players (or adopting permanent alliance which gives you LoS) also crashes the game. So there are multiple locations on the map that cause the crash.

Could it be part of city art that isn't related to a particular building?
Or some combination like a coastal building trying to display inland or something?

Are the instances you've seen generally at a similar stage in the game?

Well, I first noticed it from the save in post 58, which was the first time I tried trading maps. I forget what turn that save is. From then on I never tried trading maps, but didn't really explore my allies territory; all the exploration was done with a couple of scout thopters at the start of the game.

This was the first 1.5.2 game I played.

I have been having a problem recently myself which I was blaming on MAF, but I guess yours is the same as mine. I often set a game on autoplay and then minimize it, and come back in half an hour to look at what happened. It happens very often that the game is sitting there waiting for me, but as soon as I alt-tab to reactivate it, then the game gives a CTD. I guess it is trying to display whatever art that was, and failing the same way your save fails on displaying that territory.

I've been having the same issue and it definitely existed in 1.5.1 too. I'm running some more autoplays to see if it happened in 1.5.

FWIW, I am sure there is a city in the blank spot in Ahriman's game. You can drive the thopter along the north edge of the map, so the bad spot has to be in between the two windtraps there. That is along a single width spur of land which goes ENE. If you "retire" and carefully examine the replay map at the upper left, you can see that BT founds its second city there.

I don't know how this helps, but at least maybe we can tell it is some kind of city art.

I can explore all of the Tleilaxu territory without any hassle as you can see from the screenshot. However, the game still crashes when ctrl-Z-ing or opening the WB.

I've really got no idea what's wrong. If it is art related then why does the crash still happen when you redirect all the Art Defines? Something doesn't stack up. Everything points to art, but when you remove all the art changes the crash still happens. So perhaps it is some incredibly weird XML thing. Not sure.

The only weird thing I've spotted from the initial savegame is that there are some tiles that my changes in Dunipelago somehow still aren't converting to the correct type - namely the Sink/Rugged tiles and weirdly Sink/Mesa. I don't see how this can be responsible for the issue though.

I'm not going to be able to look into this much more in the next 24 hours I'm afraid. Perhaps someone else can pick up the investigation as I'm pretty stuck.

Well it makes no sense to me right now. I've changed the paths in the XML for Bonus, Feature, Improvement, Terrain and Unit to be a non-existant directory so that everything shows the default red blobs and pink terrain. Still the savegame crashes when the whole map is revealed. Weird.

To a non-existant directory?
My experience is, that, when you type in a non-existant directory, civ (okay, not only civ), will crash.
There's a difference between non-existant directory, and existing directory without an existing file.

In 1.5.2 I didn't do that much art-wise:

1) I added amended resources. If you remove the resources dir so that it uses the ones in the PAK file again you still get a CTD on CTRL-Z.

2) Unit Art - I added art for three new units. If you redirect these units to unit the soldier art you still get a CTD.

3) Amended harvester. If you redirect the harvester to use some other improvement the CTD still happens.

4) Added rock arch. This should not be placed, but to be thorough - redirected it to use Oasis art still gives a CTD.

If it was buildings, then we would have seen problems in 1.5 and 1.5.1 since nothing has changed since then. It could be that this crash is itermittantly occurs in 1.5/1.5.1 as well.

This is a very difficult CTD to diagnose, since it is not freely recreatable although it generally seems to take ~300 turns to show up. Process of elimination hasn't worked on the art side - since you can effectively remove everything that was introduced in 1.5.2 and still get the issue.

If I backout the XML changes and one by one reapply them to 1.5.1 (which *seems* stable AFAIK) then that will break the savegame and I won't be able to recreate the CTD. All I can think is if we can carefully rebuild 1.5.2 from 1.5.1, adding only what's necessary to get the savegame working and not using any new art.

However, I think the autoplay crashes both David and I experienced are caused by the same issue. I relatively sure these were happening in 1.5.1 as well. It might be a case of running autoplays with CTRL-Z at the start of game to reveal everything and the window open to try and narrow things down. It would be useful if someone can corroborate whether this crash occurs in 1.5.1 - otherwise looking at the 1.5.2 stuff is not going to help.

(To run autoplays use CTRL-SHIFT-X, and type in the number of turns you want the AI to play for. Frequency of autosaves can be set in Civilization4.ini)

This is a very difficult CTD to diagnose, since it is not freely recreatable although it generally seems to take ~300 turns to show up.

It was happening before turn 300; the save from post 58 crashes when you try to trade maps, and it is only turn 188.

Thinking about it, I was getting the autorun CTD when running 1.5.1 with Arrakis.py so I now think this is something that was added/changed in 1.5.1.

When I get home I think I'll try the following:

1) Delete CIV4TerrainSettings.xml to see whether the change in those settings is causing it.
2) I'm wondering whether the non-standard texture folder structure introduced in 1.5.1 might be causing an issue. I'd like to try moving all the textures back into in art/terrain/textures rather than sub-folders (and changing the necessary art defines) to see whether that might be causing the issue.

I doubt either of these is responsible, but these are the best ideas I have at the moment.

Here: :)

http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/2609/civ4screenshot0005n.jpg
http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/1174/civ4screenshot0006.jpg

I removed all quanats from ahriman's savegame and now it doesn't ctd anymore.
I think it only happens when quanat graphic is on end (polar region) of map. The Civ4 engine doesn't like that.

So here's another CTD; just hit end turn.

I don't know if its the same or not, but if it is... I'm not doing anything in my turn that would expand my line of sight. None of my cities cultural borders are expanding (though one is going to the turn after) and none of my units are moving outside my borders (there is one infantry unit auto-exploring, but I stopped him moving and the CTD still happens.
None of my cities are increasing in population size (to display graphics).

Entering Worldbuilder does NOT cause the crash. So either its a different issue, or the cause of the crash is produced in between turns after the save.

Attached is the save that crashes ("Save1") and the autosaves for preceding turns.

*edit*
Koma, good find, I don't know if that is the issue in this crash too.

*edit2*
I think it is the same Qanat issue; in my save, the Ecaz city Jarezi on the south polar region is about to finish building a Qanat (viewable in worldbuilder) just before the crash occurs.

I think it is the same Qanat issue; in my save, the Ecaz city Jarezi on the south polar region is about to finish building a Qanat (viewable in worldbuilder) just before the crash occurs.

Try to remove the city in world builder and see if the crash next turn still occurs.

I removed all quanats from ahriman's savegame and now it doesn't ctd anymore.
I think it only happens when quanat graphic is on end (polar region) of map. The Civ4 engine doesn't like that.

Nice work Koma. :)

Qanat = Aquaduct graphic right?

That makes some kind of sense then - the funky code that figures out where the graphical aqueduct graphic goes somehow doesn't work with the new terrain changes.

So, if that's true we just need to use a new building graphic for Qanat rather than the Aqueduct. Small price to pay for a mod that works.

I've read before that the bWater flag in TerrainInfos has something to do with the Aqueduct routing, so perhaps we could fix it, but I'd rather just remove it for now.

Can you reveal the whole map with Ctrl-Z with all the Qanat=Aqueduct's removed?

Try to remove the city in world builder and see if the crash next turn still occurs.

Already tried it :-)
Yes, removing the city prevents the crash.

However, turning the three polar desert waste tiles adjacent to the city into normal desert waste does NOT prevent the crash.

Removing all the polar desert waste in the BFC does not prevent the crash.

Removing all the polar terrain in the BFC does not prevent the crash.

Removing the polar ice resource does not prevent the crash.

Qanat = Aquaduct graphic right?

Yes.

That makes some kind of sense then - the funky code that figures out where the graphical aqueduct graphic goes somehow doesn't work with the new terrain changes.

Yes, easy fix.

However, turning the three polar desert waste tiles adjacent to the city into normal desert waste does NOT prevent the crash.

It's not the polar terrain itself, it's more that the Aquaduct is leading to ehm.. nowhere. I had a similar problem when placing rivers in colonization world builder causing a ctd. Maybe it's possible to set a max latitude for buildings. Reducing it to 80 or 75 should help.

Maybe it's possible to set a max latitude for buildings. Reducing it to 80 or 75 should help.

That would be weird for gameplay purposes, and confusing for players who didn't understand why they couldn't build their qanat. I would suggest instead just going to a different graphic and losing the aqueduct art. It doesn't really make sense for the channel to be coming from some nearby hill anyway; in vanilla its raining in the hills so it makes sense to carry water from there, but this doesn't hold true on Arrakis.

I removed all quanats from ahriman's savegame and now it doesn't ctd anymore.

Excellent find! I had been tearing my hair out.

*How* did you remove city buildings from Ahriman's save? I only know how to do that using WB, and you cannot invoke WB on his save.

Excellent find! I had been tearing my hair out.

*How* did you remove city buildings from Ahriman's save? I only know how to do that using WB, and you cannot invoke WB on his save.

I removed qanats with python's CyCity().setNumRealBuilding. :)

Slavery/serfdom/imperial fealty whipping/drafting results here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=335213&page=6

Posts 107, 108.

Many of the AI players are destroying their economies through over-whipping or drafting their populations to death; I tested what happened if we removed the ability of those three civics to be used to whip citizens for hammers or draft them for units.

I'm getting a CTD at the end of this turn.

To be clear, not between turns,but at the end. Ie, when you would normally get "Press enter to end turn" the game crashes right there, before I press anything.

The attached save, there's only one unit left to move, the scout thopter. Once it uses up all it's moves, the game crashes every time. Pretty sure the problem isn't related to that thopter itself, because even deleting it doesn't avoid the crash, and the crashing happens distinctly a second or so after you're done with the thopter, and focus moves away from it.

I'm getting a CTD at the end of this turn.

Thanks for the feedback! Please let us know exactly which version you are using. There is a known bug in 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 regarding the visibility of the aqueduct building, which is fixed in 1.5.3 and upwards.

That's a gvood question, I'm not sure how to check. I downloaded the latest version about 6 hours or so before making that post.

The version number is contained in the name of the installation zip/exe file, for example, dune-wars-patch-1-5-4.exe is the 1.5.4 version. Also, you can tell by looking in the system tab of the BUG control panel. In game, type ctrl-shift-o and go to the system tab. The version number is at the upper right.

Some questions that will help define where you are:
a) Does terrain have rock/badlands/rugged/mesa with hills and peaks? Or does it have rock, mesa, graben (in sinks) salt pan (in sinks). If the former then you're 1.5.
b) Is there a resource Sisterhood Convenant? If so, then you're in 1.5.2 or later, otherwise you're 1.5 or 1.5.1.
c) Is there a Qanat building, or a Mushtumal building? If the former, then you're in 1.5.2 or earlier, and 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 have crash bugs associated with this building.
d) Do windtraps spread fresh water? If so, you're in 1.5.3 or earlier. If not, you're in 1.5.4. Alternatively, are the religions Imperium/Landsraad/Tleilaxu supremacy/Mahdi/Technocracy/Shai-Hulad? If so you're in 1.5.4. If they're still versions of christianity, zensunni, judaism, etc., you're in 1.5.3 or earlier.

c) is the most important here. If there is still a Qanat building, then its a known bug that has been fixed.

Just a quick little issue, not really important, but you guys might want to fix in the next update. You're using an older version of the install script, the newer version is a bit better, spent alot of time updating it actually. Also you guys are using a script that wants to place an icon, but you don't have one defined, so the shortcuts it creates looks bad. I recommend updating to the new install script with add on support and putting the source code in the optional add on section, and using an icon. Anyway, like I said minor issue, but just figured I'd point them out.

The version number is contained in the name of the installation zip/exe file, for example, dune-wars-patch-1-5-4.exe is the 1.5.4 version. Also, you can tell by looking in the system tab of the BUG control panel. In game, type ctrl-shift-o and go to the system tab. The version number is at the upper right.

In that case, it seems I have v1.5, and not anything after that.
I had a look over the first post in the download thread, and I can't see anywhere to get 1.5.4

Edit: Oh wait, I found it, on the offsite link. that's a bit unintuitive. Also, the links in the first post appear to be broken. The url on the main download is:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=13270[COLOR=%22blue

removing that little extra bit at the end makes it work of course

Here is 1.5.4

http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=13362

Guys, can we keep this thread updated too? http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=325308

what's changed in 1.5.4 from the main 1.5 ? I can't find any release notes..

Main changes: terrain very different, war AI significantly improved.
Slavery whipping and drafting temporarily removed (it was weakening the AI too much)
Religion in the process of being changed.
Terraforming in the process of being changed.
Changes to the homeworld screen.
Economy tweaks
Some new units, and art changes, and bugfixes.

1.5.1 here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8481268&postcount=373
1.5.2 here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8487413&postcount=384
1.5.3 here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8492530&postcount=394
1.5.4 here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8498554&postcount=412

The "incremental changes" thread has the latest patches.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8498554

The thread is updated; 1.5.4 is announced at the end of the thread.

I cannot control the first post of that thread. We can ask the mods to unsticky it and then create a new thread.

I cannot control the first post of that thread. We can ask the mods to unsticky it and then create a new thread.

You really should.

A good rule to go by for any mod, there should be a "Download this mod here" thread, posted by the leader of a mod team, kept up to date with every new release and it's changelog. And should there ever be a change in leadership, or disappearance of a leader, as sometimes happens, that thread needs to be urgently replaced by whoever is in command at the time.

I have a little complaint about improvements.

As I can see, there are a few improvements which have multiple stages:
Shallow Well/Deep Well
Surface Mine/Deep Mine
Solar Farm I/Solar Farm II
Turbines I/Turbines II

etc.
These are kind of annoying to work with. Especially since the old one stays visible cluttering up the options menu.
Would it be poissible to make older versions obsolete when you gain the ability to make a better one, since they are better in every way. Or perhaps even, not have multiple stages at all, and just have techs which would give a better stage, increase the yields of the base improvement instead.




Also, some thoughts about spice. I haven't played incredibly far into a game yet, so perhaps there are things I'm not aware of. But my overall impression so far, is that Spice doesn't seem to be as important as it should be.


"He who controls the spice, controls the universe"
but in practice, it seems more like
"He who controls the spice, controls slightly more wealth than others"
which isn't quite as epic.

Spice is hard to get. This is mainly because it only appears in areas of desert where you can't build cities. Almost like sea, really. The only way to get it is to build cities on the "coast" and expand culture far enough to reach the spice. Desert Waste gives relatively little in tile yields, and I believe Deep desert gives nothing at all, so there's an opportunity cost there, in sacrificing workable tiles in a city radius to get more spice.

To add to that, spice is temporary. I know more can be spawned by blows, but that doesn't seem to be happening to me so far. My experience of spice is building a city next to it for some temporary prosperity,, and then that city sinks into mediocrity once the spice expires and it's left with a poor city site.. Decent, sustainable city sites rarely contain any desert tiles, and so no spice.

Also, I'd like to ask, why was spice nerfed? I started playing this mod on v1.5, and a spice tile with a harvester on it gave 7 :commerce: then*. While that is a LOT in absolute terms, it's not really that great when you consider the opportunity cost of building a city in a poor location, as well as the temporary nature of spice, and the frustration of rebuilding harvesters constantly when sand worms attack. I was already planning to suggest that even 7 :commerce: wasn't enough. But when I updated to 1.5.4, I found that spice had been nerfed, to give only a total of 4 :commerce: with a harvester. There are normal, eternally sustainable, resources in base BTS, that give more :commerce: than that. Resources that don't randomly vanish after a few turns, and that don't get constantly raped by str20 sandworms.

On a related note, the Arrakis Spice civic. It gives +1 :hammers: per spice harvester, which is "nice", but that's all it is. It hardly seems worth the effort. Production is easy enough to get from mines on the ridiculously common Crystals resource, that +1 :hammers: from a tile you never really expected to get production from at all, doesn't make a lot of difference.

In short, I'm finding in the recent verson, that there doesn't seem to be a lot of reason to care about spice. The opportunity cost of placing a city in a bad location just to gain an ultimately temporary commerce boost from spice, (until it vanishes) doesn't seem worth the maintanance costs you pay for it. Not compared to placing a city farther "inland" next to a few groundwater/crystal resources, and growing a big, productive, sustainable city.

I think spice needs to be a LOT more valuable. but this is just my opinion

Thanks for the feedback, WarKirby, your opinions are valued. Your feelings about the importance of spice and the averageness of the Arrakis Spice civic are shared by myself and a number of others. There is some discussion in the modpack thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=335213) and most recently in the Arrakis mapscript thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=325293). It is not a straightforward problem to fix, but we are discussing possible changes.

Also note that there are some "hidden" benefits from Arrakis spice civic; for example, it radically reduces the chance that a spice resource will disappear when you harvest it, so it will lead to a longer average lifetime of a harvester, and so more spice tiles within your borders.

I didn't notice that spice tile yields had been reduced, that seems strange to me.

But I agree with you in general.

I don't think there is any way to obsolete worker improvements.

I didn't notice that spice tile yields had been reduced, that seems strange to me.

Polar desert waste yield was reduced from 2c to 1c. That is the only change.

I don't think there is any way to obsolete worker improvements.

One thing I have not taken the opportunity to explore is "linking" the stage 1-3 improvements the way hamlet-cottage-village-town are linked. This may reduce the number of buttons. It should also allow a storm/worm to reduce the improvement by one level instead of destroying it all at once.

But there are several things to look out for. I am not sure they can be prevented from *automatically* upgrading. Also, even with a high tech level, you may be presented only with the worker action for the lowest one. (There is no way you can directly build a town.)

Another possibility is to just get rid of the II and III improvements, and give additional +hammer, etc bonuses through techs. This would also reduce the amount of new improvement art which is needed; the current selection of buildings is kind of random.

What do you think?

Cottages upgrade to the next level after a fixed number of turns defined by the iUpgradeTime tag. I don't think that's really the behaviour we want for Mines, Wells, etc. There seems to be no way to trigger the upgrade in another way e.g. discovery of a tech.

Another possibility is to just get rid of the II and III improvements, and give additional +hammer, etc bonuses through techs. This would also reduce the amount of new improvement art which is needed; the current selection of buildings is kind of random.

On balance, perhaps we should go for this option.

Cottages upgrade to the next level after a fixed number of turns defined by the iUpgradeTime tag. I don't think that's really the behaviour we want for Mines, Wells, etc.

I suspect that setting iUpgradeTime to -1 would link them without ever upgrading, or else it would be an easy sdk mod to accomplish that. This meets one specific goal, of downgrading the improvement one level after a sandworm/sandstorm attack. It does not meet the other new goal, of reducing the number of worker buttons. I am kind of surprised that there is no way to obsolete worker buttons, or to avoid displaying ones for which the tech is not yet available.

Thinking about it a little more, I guess removing the II building and giving +1 hammer via the tech is not really equivalent. The Deep Mine on crystal, for example, gives +2 hammer more than the Surface Mine on crystal.

I haven't taken the opportunity to explore what can be done with linking the improvements or dynamically adding/removing buttons. It's on the list of things to do.

Thinking about it a little more, I guess removing the II building and giving +1 hammer via the tech is not really equivalent. The Deep Mine on crystal, for example, gives +2 hammer more than the Surface Mine on crystal.

You can enter increases of more than +1 at multiple different techs via TechYieldChanges, so you can give +2 hammer at what ever tech currently enables Deep Mine, but you can't have different increases for different bonuses correct.

My example was not very complete. Today the surface mine gives +1h on mesa, +2h on crystal. So a surface mine on mesa-only gives +1h, mesa/crystal gives +3h. The deep mine today gives +2h on mesa, +4h on crystal. So a deep mine on mesa-only gives +2h, mesa/crystal gives +6h. If we remove deep mine and have Desert Industry add +1h on surface mine, the mesa/crystal yield will go down from +6h to +4h. If we have DI add +3h on surface mine, then mesa-only yield goes up from +2h to +4h.

Perhaps these changes are minor compared to the reduced player confusion from getting rid of all the extra buttons.

Polar desert waste yield was reduced from 2c to 1c. That is the only change.
You also reduced polar desert waste from 2w to 1w.

It was an over-nerf.

One thing I have not taken the opportunity to explore is "linking" the stage 1-3 improvements the way hamlet-cottage-village-town are linked. This may reduce the number of buttons. It should also allow a storm/worm to reduce the improvement by one level instead of destroying it all at once.

I thought that having the buildable mines and wells was deliberate, so that you had to invest worker time in upgrading your buildings, rather than just getting improved yields for free. It was one of the things I liked about this mod - always something for workers to do.
I don't think that having lots of buttons is that big a problem.

I suspect that setting iUpgradeTime to -1 would link them without ever upgrading, or else it would be an easy sdk mod to accomplish that. This meets one specific goal, of downgrading the improvement one level after a sandworm/sandstorm attack

This sounds good to me. I think the downgrade after pillage or sandstorms is a good feature, but that the button issue is unimportant.

I think the forcing workers to build the upgrade is important, I don't think that players really get very confused by multiple buttons, they can figure that out pretty fast, and the buttons have numbers on them. So its obvious that 2 is better than 1 and 3 is better than 2.

You also reduced polar desert waste from 2w to 1w. It was an over-nerf.

WarKirby's comment was about commerce per tile apparently decreasing from 7 to 4. The only change I made *for that* was reducing polar desert waste commerce by one.

The economic tuning will apparently go on without end, but several people have commented that one can race through the tech tree too fast and that early expansion is too easy. I feel this is because commerce income is too high. I also feel that the cities on polar terrain are too big and too wealthy. You clearly disagree, but those were my reasons for reducing yields on polar desert waste.

Also note that there are some "hidden" benefits from Arrakis spice civic; for example, it radically reduces the chance that a spice resource will disappear when you harvest it, so it will lead to a longer average lifetime of a harvester, and so more spice tiles within your borders.


Well, hidden information is a bad thing. This really needs some text in there to mention it, I think.


Personally, I'd like to see spice yields increased massively. I wonder how it would play to have a spice tile yield 20 :commerce: per turn. I think that would be fun, given the temporary nature of them, andthat cities near spice often don't grow much since they're surrounded by desert.

maybe commerce yields of other resources could be reduced to compensate, so as to make spice more valuable. As is, it just seems "nice to have" rather than "your sole reason for existence" which I was under the impression is what it's supposed to be

Oh, also, I agree with comments about techs being too easy. But this isn't because of commerce income, it's because the cost of techs is set so low, and also the cost of settlers is low.

I don't see easy expansion as a problem, though. Since it's supposed to be representative of a wealthy existing galactic power setting up on a planet, rather than a group of cavemen starting from scratch ala civ. It makes sense that they'd expand much faster, from bringing in offworld labour, resources, etc.

But this isn't because of commerce income


It is partly, commerce can be much higher than vanilla because of trade routes (every city is coastal), spice corporation yield and high tile yields.
Increasing tech costs probably can't hurt though.

and also the cost of settlers is low.

I'd like to see the settler cost increased significantly, but apparently this isn't easy.

It makes sense that they'd expand much faster, from bringing in offworld labour, resources, etc.

Our sort of "backstory" is that there was some kind of disaster that wiped out civilization on Arrakis and cut off trade for a while, and you are basically starting from nothing and have no contact with the rest of the galaxy, at least until the offworld trade tech. Its a bit of a fudge, but it basically works.


Personally, I'd like to see spice yields increased massively.

Keep in mind that the main benefit from spice comes not from tile yeilds, but from the corporation which you can build as soon as you have a single spice resource. This can easily end up giving 100+ commerce in your capital, which gives a huge economic advantage (commerce gets multiplied by beaker and gold modifiers, like universities and banks).

I agree that you aren't getting enough spice on Arrakis mapscript at the moment (try out Duneipegalo).

I find the game plays best on Epic speed at the moment.

I'd like to see the settler cost increased significantly, but apparently this isn't easy.


yes it is.

1. Open Unitinfos.xml
2. Find the Settler
3. Change iCost to a bigger number

I get a python exception when I press left shift.

This is annoying because I use this to select multiple units

how does the tlelaxu plague mechanic work?

I attacked them, and somewhere along the way noticed that all my troops had the plague, which doesn't seem to go away. made it impossible to continue a war. and it's still on them now. is there any way to get rid of it, or be immune to it ?

yes it is.

1. Open Unitinfos.xml
2. Find the Settler
3. Change iCost to a bigger number

:) That's what I thought, but it's not that simple I believe. You can try playing with that number, but Settler iCost is set to zero by default. They and Workers have a special way of working where food and production totalled goes into building. I could be wrong, but I think if you set it to a positive then Settlers will behave just like other units and food will not be contributed to building. All I could find was this info:

The basic Value is:
iDefineName>BASE_CITY_GROWTH_THRESHOLD
iDefineIntVal>2
File: GlobalDefines.xml (assets directory)

This value affect City growth and Setller build time!

iDefineName>CITY_GROWTH_MULTIPLIER
iDefineIntVal>20
File: GlobalDefines.xml (assets directory)

This value affect City growth only!

iGrowthPercent>
File: CIV4GameSpeedInfo.xml (assets\GameInfo directory)

Affects city growth and settler build time!

Base on the BASE_CITY_GROWTH_THRESHOLD!

I don't have time to play with this myself until the weekend. We obviously want a way to increase Settler build without affecting the City growth rate.

We obviously want a way to increase Settler build without affecting the City growth rate.

It wouldn't be a tragedy if we slowed the city growth rate for the first few levels eg up to pop 5). The concentration of water resources into only a few tiles for a city, and the high value bonus resources, mean that cities in Dunewars grow *much* faster than in vanilla.
Or we could also tone the water cache "saves 50% water" down to say 30% (and take Deathstill down to 40%), its really a no-brainer as the first building.

Don't forget that the city square gives a minimum of 3 water which is 1 more than vanilla. We could reverse this change.

Don't forget that the city square gives a minimum of 3 water which is 1 more than vanilla. We could reverse this change.

Possibly, but I kinda like that one, since other tiles won't be generating anything until you research the first water tech and start building windtraps or dew collectors.

how does the tlelaxu plague mechanic work?

I attacked them, and somewhere along the way noticed that all my troops had the plague, which doesn't seem to go away. made it impossible to continue a war. and it's still on them now. is there any way to get rid of it, or be immune to it ?

Each unit which is involved in a combat with a Tleilaxu unit has a percent chance to catch the plague. Each unit which has the plague has the same percent chance to spread to another unit. Only units of civs which are at war with Tleilaxu can catch or spread the plague. As soon as you make peace, all units will be cured. Also, all units in cities with hospitals or a Suk Academy are cured.

Also, if a unit with the plague enters a city, that city will have an invisible building called Tleilaxu Plague, which gives -2 health, but the building does not spread plague.

It has been suggested to reduce the percent chance of transmission, which is a constant in the DuneWars.py file; search for "transmit percent". It has been suggested that certain units such as walkers and hornets should be immune to the plague. It has been suggested that once a unit has had the plague for some number of turns, say 10 turns, it should recover, and then be immune for some number of turns. These are all good suggestions which have not been implemented yet.

The idea of these civilization unique abilities is that every civ should have an ability which is painful like this. You can see the list in the "Unique Abilities" section of the Dune Wars concept tab of the civilopedia. Some civs do not have this type of ability implemented yet. The goal is actually to make the other civ UA stronger, so that they balance, rather than to make all the UA weak. This is one nice feature of FFH, which took a long time to do; each civ has a powerful ability which is balanced with other civs' abilities.

Also note that there are some "hidden" benefits from Arrakis spice civic; for example, it radically reduces the chance that a spice resource will disappear when you harvest it
Well, hidden information is a bad thing. This really needs some text in there to mention it, I think.

It is not hidden, but perhaps there are other places it could be mentioned. It is mentioned in the hover help for the civic. I could add a mention in the Spice section of the Dune Wars concepts tab of the civilopedia. Are there other places it should be mentioned?

It is not hidden, but perhaps there are other places it could be mentioned. It is mentioned in the hover help for the civic. I could add a mention in the Spice section of the Dune Wars concepts tab of the civilopedia. Are there other places it should be mentioned?

I think it would be cool if you can see, how many turns are left before a spice bonus will vanish (when hovering over tile).

Possibly, but I kinda like that one, since other tiles won't be generating anything until you research the first water tech and start building windtraps or dew collectors.

I agree which is why I changed it in the first place. Let's not change it then.

I think it would be cool if you can see, how many turns are left before a spice bonus will vanish (when hovering over tile).

It has a random percent of disappearing each turn. It used to be that there were three density levels which would decay; but that did not seem to add anything. Would it reflect ""reality"" for the spice to announce how much longer it will be workable? In the American West, there were huge copper or silver mines which were suddenly "played out".

It has a random percent of disappearing each turn.

I think it works fine like this.

In the American West, there were huge copper or silver mines which were suddenly "played out".

And in South Africa, and basically anywhere else that mining occurred.

Would it reflect ""reality"" for the spice to announce how much longer it will be workable?

You could say the same about knowing how many turns are left before getting a new tech, bug mods gp bar or combat chances...

I think it works fine like this.
I think it only works fine for fast game speeds. I don't know how often I started building a harvester and spice vanished before I had finished it, or just a few turns after... Very annoying, especially in early game.

You could say the same about knowing how many turns are left before getting a new tech, bug mods gp bar or combat chances...

I suppose that is true. If people think it is important, we could re-implement the way spice decay works, so that it takes a constant number of turns. Then we could put it into the hover help. The advantage of the random number is that we do not need to keep any "state" for the plot, so the code is simpler.

I think it only works fine for fast game speeds. I don't know how often I started building a harvester and spice vanished before I had finished it, or just a few turns after... Very annoying, especially in early game.

This can be solved by adjusting the percent chance based on game speed. You have suggested that, and I apologize that I have not implemented that yet. In the python how-to, I have given information about how the decay rate can be tuned by editing DuneWars.py.

One thing I have not taken the opportunity to explore is "linking" the stage 1-3 improvements the way hamlet-cottage-village-town are linked. This may reduce the number of buttons. It should also allow a storm/worm to reduce the improvement by one level instead of destroying it all at once.

This discussion was around posts 105-113. I have now explored this, and as far as xml-only changes go, there is no good opportunity. Of course "anything is possible" with sdk changes, if it is important enough. In xml, there are two hooks to play with: vanilla ImprovementUpgrade/ImprovementPillage, which is how cottage->town upgrades work and pillage downgrades work; and jeckel's mod for ImprovementRequired, which can limit one improvement from being built, unless it is on top of some other improvement.

In DW today, IU/IP is not used and IR is used for turbines only. So you cannot build a turbine 2 except on top of a turbine 1.

I have also explored how worker build buttons appear. It seems that when you enter an era, all the build buttons for that era appear, even if you do not have the tech. So when you enter the era which contains the tech for deep mines, even if you do not have the deep mining tech, you still get the worker button. This puts one small limit on the number of worker buttons that appear. I could not find any hint of a way to obsolete worker build buttons. You could argue this should not happen anyway, in case the player wants to build some improvement fast, instead of building the best possible improvement.

I tried using IU/IP to link mines the same way cottage->town is linked. Even when I set the iUpgradeTime to 0 or -1, the surface mine upgrades to a deep mine after 1 turn. In the sdk code, there is a function like "max(upgrade time, 1)" and no check for zero or negative. So you cannot prevent automatic upgrading. Also as soon as you use this, there is no way to have the build buttons for the upgraded improvements. This means you would only ever get a surface mine build button, no matter how high your tech. That isn't a dealbreaker but the automatic upgrade after 1 turn is a dealbreaker.

So, without sdk changes, we cannot use IU/IP to downgrade higher level improvements to lower level ones. Although this sdk change would not be rocket science, it appears about 20 places would need to be changed, because the computation to display help text "Will upgrade to X in Y turns" appears many places and is involved in AI decisions about what to build. Also, the upper level build buttons would need to be enabled, and I did not trace out where that would happen.

I was a little surprised to find that turbines are stacked with IR. That mod doesn't appear to cover everything, since the turbine 2 and turbine 3 buttons still appear greyed out when you have the tech. So if we added this, it would not reduce the number of buttons appearing. I cannot think of any strong reason to use this more.

In summary, there is some disagreement on whether changes in this area are important, and there is no easy change, so I am going to put this onto the back burner.

I know that it is possible at least: in some mods (Rise of Mankind I think?) there are mines that upgrade cottage style from shallow mine to deep mine, *and* have the deep mine buildable directly at a higher tech level.

But it sounds from your investigations like this requires sdk.

For me, the only change that would be worth getting is to have the downgrade one-level from pillage.
If that also needs to use a cottage upgrade mechanic, so be it, just set the upgrade time at 150-200 turns or something, but if that means that the upgraded version is not buildable, then its not worth doing this.
Its more important to have them be buildable than to have them drop down a stage when pillaged.

However, I see no real reason for a level 2 turbine to be buildable only on top of a level 1. We don't require that for mines or wells.

In terms of yield tuning:
At the moment, the AI only uses cottages and turbines; mines and solar farms are never worth building by the AI. The AI sees the -1 water from the solar farm, and thinks thats bad, and it doesn't understand that the -1 water only applies on tiles with water.
Also, the turbine currently requires construction time to upgrade, but the solar farm upgrades for free, making the turbine a bad investment.

My suggestions would be:
a) bring the level 2 turbine earlier in the tech-tree - maybe to the same tech as the deep mine?
b) Increase the surface/deep/core mine yields to +2/+3/+4 hammers. Reduce the extra bonus from bonus resources; currently a surfacemine on nitrates yields ~2 extra over a regular sufrace mine, while a core mine on nitrates yields ~4 extra over a regular surface mine, so the surface mine gives +3 hammers on a nitrates resource, while a core mine gives ~+7 hammers on a nitrates resource (not exact figures, I don't have the game here right now).
c) Remove the initial -1 water from solar farms, and have it added at the tech that gives the next +1 hammer. So solar farms are +2 hammers, and then get +1hammers -1 water from the tech that improves them.
So: rock/graben/rugged can have cottage, turbine or solar farm. Mesa can have mine or windtrap.

I know that it is possible at least: in some mods (Rise of Mankind I think?) there are mines that upgrade cottage style from shallow mine to deep mine, *and* have the deep mine buildable directly at a higher tech level.

But it sounds from your investigations like this requires sdk.Yes, Rise of Mankind has improvements that upgrade and which also can be built once techs for them are gained ie. the earlier improvement type becomes "obsolete". This doesn't need any SDK changes - however I noticed that for some unknown reason this doesn't work with cottage->town upgrade path.

Yes, Rise of Mankind has improvements that upgrade and which also can be built once techs for them are gained ie. the earlier improvement type becomes "obsolete". This doesn't need any SDK changes - however I noticed that for some unknown reason this doesn't work with cottage->town upgrade path.
How is this written in the xml? I cannot figure out what tags would give this behavior.

Here is Civ4ImprovementInfos from Rise of Mankind if that helps.

Are there any other files that you'd also like?

Here is Civ4ImprovementInfos from Rise of Mankind if that helps.

I am not sure what Zappara means when he says there are no sdk changes. In this xml file, the mine upgrades to shaft mine, and the iUpgradeTime is set to 0. In vanilla, RevDCM and BUG, this causes the mine to upgrade automatically to a shaft mine after one turn, even if you do not have the tech. What this shows me is that others have done this sdk change, which is fine; in general untangling one sdk change from a large set of changes is complex. If it is important, we can do it, but I do not think it is easy.

What this shows me is that others have done this sdk change

Sounds plausible.

I think this fits into a "nice to have" category rather than an "important feature", so lets leave it for now, unless Zappara can somehow shed extra light on this.

RoM's xml for Mine and Shaft mine:
<ImprovementInfo>
<Type>IMPROVEMENT_MINE</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_IMPROVEMENT_MINE</Description>
<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_IMPROVEMENT_MINE_PEDIA</Civilopedia>
<ArtDefineTag>ART_DEF_IMPROVEMENT_MINE</ArtDefineTag>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
<bActsAsCity>0</bActsAsCity>
<bHillsMakesValid>1</bHillsMakesValid>
<bFreshWaterMakesValid>0</bFreshWaterMakesValid>
<bRiverSideMakesValid>0</bRiverSideMakesValid>
<bNoFreshWater>0</bNoFreshWater>
<bRequiresFlatlands>0</bRequiresFlatlands>
<bRequiresRiverSide>0</bRequiresRiverSide>
<bRequiresIrrigation>0</bRequiresIrrigation>
<bCarriesIrrigation>0</bCarriesIrrigation>
<bRequiresFeature>0</bRequiresFeature>
<bWater>0</bWater>
<bGoody>0</bGoody>
<bPermanent>0</bPermanent>
<iAdvancedStartCost>24</iAdvancedStartCost>
<iAdvancedStartCostIncrease>0</iAdvancedStartCostIncrease>
<iTilesPerGoody>0</iTilesPerGoody>
<iGoodyRange>0</iGoodyRange>
<iFeatureGrowth>0</iFeatureGrowth>
<iUpgradeTime>40</iUpgradeTime>
<iAirBombDefense>10</iAirBombDefense>
<iDefenseModifier>0</iDefenseModifier>
<iHappiness>0</iHappiness>
<iPillageGold>10</iPillageGold>
<bOutsideBorders>1</bOutsideBorders>
<TerrainMakesValids/>
<FeatureMakesValids/>
<BonusTypeStructs>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_BAUXITE</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_COAL</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_COPPER</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_GEMS</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>-1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>5</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_GOLD</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>-1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>6</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_IRON</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_SILVER</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>-1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>4</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_URANIUM</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>3</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_SULPHUR</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>2</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_LEAD</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
</BonusTypeStructs>
<ImprovementPillage/>
<ImprovementUpgrade>IMPROVEMENT_SHAFT_MINE</ImprovementUpgrade>
<TechYieldChanges>
<TechYieldChange>
<PrereqTech>TECH_SEISMOLOGY</PrereqTech>
<TechYields>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>1</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</TechYields>
</TechYieldChange>
</TechYieldChanges>
<RouteYieldChanges>
<RouteYieldChange>
<RouteType>ROUTE_ROAD</RouteType>
<RouteYields>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>1</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</RouteYields>
</RouteYieldChange>
<RouteYieldChange>
<RouteType>ROUTE_PAVED</RouteType>
<RouteYields>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>1</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</RouteYields>
</RouteYieldChange>
<RouteYieldChange>
<RouteType>ROUTE_MODERN_ROAD</RouteType>
<RouteYields>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>1</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</RouteYields>
</RouteYieldChange>
<RouteYieldChange>
<RouteType>ROUTE_RAILROAD</RouteType>
<RouteYields>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>2</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</RouteYields>
</RouteYieldChange>
<RouteYieldChange>
<RouteType>ROUTE_RAILROAD_ELECTRIC</RouteType>
<RouteYields>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>2</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</RouteYields>
</RouteYieldChange>
</RouteYieldChanges>
<bGraphicalOnly>0</bGraphicalOnly>
</ImprovementInfo>
<ImprovementInfo>
<Type>IMPROVEMENT_SHAFT_MINE</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_IMPROVEMENT_SHAFT_MINE</Description>
<Civilopedia>TXT_KEY_IMPROVEMENT_SHAFT_MINE_PEDIA</Civilopedia>
<ArtDefineTag>ART_DEF_IMPROVEMENT_MINE</ArtDefineTag>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>2</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
<bActsAsCity>0</bActsAsCity>
<bHillsMakesValid>0</bHillsMakesValid>
<bFreshWaterMakesValid>0</bFreshWaterMakesValid>
<bRiverSideMakesValid>0</bRiverSideMakesValid>
<bNoFreshWater>0</bNoFreshWater>
<bRequiresFlatlands>0</bRequiresFlatlands>
<bRequiresRiverSide>0</bRequiresRiverSide>
<bRequiresIrrigation>0</bRequiresIrrigation>
<bCarriesIrrigation>0</bCarriesIrrigation>
<bRequiresFeature>0</bRequiresFeature>
<bWater>0</bWater>
<bGoody>0</bGoody>
<bPermanent>0</bPermanent>
<iAdvancedStartCost>48</iAdvancedStartCost>
<iAdvancedStartCostIncrease>0</iAdvancedStartCostIncrease>
<iTilesPerGoody>0</iTilesPerGoody>
<iGoodyRange>0</iGoodyRange>
<iFeatureGrowth>0</iFeatureGrowth>
<iUpgradeTime>0</iUpgradeTime>
<iAirBombDefense>10</iAirBombDefense>
<iDefenseModifier>0</iDefenseModifier>
<iHappiness>-1</iHappiness>
<iPillageGold>10</iPillageGold>
<bOutsideBorders>1</bOutsideBorders>
<TerrainMakesValids/>
<FeatureMakesValids/>
<BonusTypeStructs>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_BAUXITE</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_COAL</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_COPPER</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_GEMS</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>-1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>5</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_GOLD</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>-1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>6</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_IRON</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_SILVER</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>-1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>4</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_URANIUM</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>3</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_SULPHUR</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>2</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusTypeStruct>
<BonusType>BONUS_LEAD</BonusType>
<bBonusMakesValid>1</bBonusMakesValid>
<bBonusTrade>1</bBonusTrade>
<iDiscoverRand>10000</iDiscoverRand>
<YieldChanges>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>1</iYieldChange>
<iYieldChange>0</iYieldChange>
</YieldChanges>
</BonusTypeStruct>
</BonusTypeStructs>
<ImprovementPillage>IMPROVEMENT_MINE</ImprovementPillage>
<ImprovementUpgrade/>
<TechYieldChanges>
<TechYieldChange>
<PrereqTech>TECH_SEISMOLOGY</PrereqTech>
<TechYields>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>1</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</TechYields>
</TechYieldChange>
</TechYieldChanges>
<RouteYieldChanges>
<RouteYieldChange>
<RouteType>ROUTE_ROAD</RouteType>
<RouteYields>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>1</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</RouteYields>
</RouteYieldChange>
<RouteYieldChange>
<RouteType>ROUTE_PAVED</RouteType>
<RouteYields>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>1</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</RouteYields>
</RouteYieldChange>
<RouteYieldChange>
<RouteType>ROUTE_MODERN_ROAD</RouteType>
<RouteYields>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>1</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</RouteYields>
</RouteYieldChange>
<RouteYieldChange>
<RouteType>ROUTE_RAILROAD</RouteType>
<RouteYields>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>2</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</RouteYields>
</RouteYieldChange>
<RouteYieldChange>
<RouteType>ROUTE_RAILROAD_ELECTRIC</RouteType>
<RouteYields>
<iYield>0</iYield>
<iYield>2</iYield>
<iYield>0</iYield>
</RouteYields>
</RouteYieldChange>
</RouteYieldChanges>
<bGraphicalOnly>0</bGraphicalOnly>
</ImprovementInfo>Mine's iUpgradeTime is 40 so that it upgrades to Shaft Mine.

Now in BuildInfos xml file these improvements have the following settings:
<BuildInfo>
<Type>BUILD_MINE</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_BUILD_MINE</Description>
<Help/>
<PrereqTech>TECH_MINING</PrereqTech>
<iTime>400</iTime>
<iCost>0</iCost>
<bKill>0</bKill>
<ImprovementType>IMPROVEMENT_MINE</ImprovementType>
<RouteType>NONE</RouteType>
<EntityEvent>ENTITY_EVENT_MINE</EntityEvent>
<FeatureStructs/>
<HotKey>KB_M</HotKey>
<bAltDown>0</bAltDown>
<bShiftDown>0</bShiftDown>
<bCtrlDown>0</bCtrlDown>
<iHotKeyPriority>0</iHotKeyPriority>
<Button>,Art/Interface/Buttons/Builds/BuildMine.dds,Art/Interface/Buttons/Actions_Builds_LeaderHeads_Specialists_Atlas.dds,6 ,7</Button>
</BuildInfo>
<BuildInfo>
<Type>BUILD_SHAFT_MINE</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_BUILD_SHAFT_MINE</Description>
<Help/>
<PrereqTech>TECH_STEAM_POWER</PrereqTech>
<iTime>800</iTime>
<iCost>25</iCost>
<bKill>0</bKill>
<ImprovementType>IMPROVEMENT_SHAFT_MINE</ImprovementType>
<RouteType>NONE</RouteType>
<EntityEvent>ENTITY_EVENT_MINE</EntityEvent>
<FeatureStructs/>
<HotKey>KB_M</HotKey>
<bAltDown>0</bAltDown>
<bShiftDown>1</bShiftDown>
<bCtrlDown>0</bCtrlDown>
<iHotKeyPriority>0</iHotKeyPriority>
<Button>,Art/Interface/Buttons/Builds/BuildMine.dds,Art/Interface/Buttons/Actions_Builds_LeaderHeads_Specialists_Atlas.dds,6 ,7</Button>
</BuildInfo>
So, Mine is set to automatically upgrade to Shaft Mine and once player discovers Steam Power he can build directly Shaft Mine. Normal Mines keep upgrading to Shaft Mines of course if city works on those plots. This system uses default BtS features. Note that PlotLSystem probably prevents this system with cottage->town upgrade path as those improvements have the setting bUseLSystem == 1 in the improvements xml file.

RoM's xml for Mine and Shaft mine: ...
So, Mine is set to automatically upgrade to Shaft Mine and once player discovers Steam Power he can build directly Shaft Mine. Normal Mines keep upgrading to Shaft Mines of course if city works on those plots. This system uses default BtS features.

Thanks for the details. The xml you included was slightly different than the xml Ahriman uploaded, regarding iUpgradeTime. In your system, if the player never researches Steam Power, still all their worked Mines upgrade to Shaft Mines in 40 turns. That is what I was hoping to avoid. I suppose we can make the upgrade time 500, so it will never happen.

The xml you included was slightly different than the xml Ahriman uploaded
I might have an outdated version or something? I dunno.


That is what I was hoping to avoid. I suppose we can make the upgrade time 500, so it will never happen.

Its harmless I think. We could even have it shorter, so that it will happen eventually (200 turns?), but you would be better off building on top of it. I'm indifferent.

Add a "hint" note: "Though wells, turbines and mines will eventually upgrade by themselves, with the appropriate technology you can build more advanced and higher yield improvements directly."

It would be cool to have mines, turbines and wells drop down 1 level from pillage, its worth the slight confusion of slowly (or never) upgrading automatically.

My opinion of this mod, after much delighted astonishment at someone having such an idea of making such a thing, is that it needs more polish. The lack of writing in the "Dune'o'Pedia" and the lack of text in the submenus is the most glaring example of this. Not only will doing so make the mod look infinitely more professional, but the lack of such makes adapting to the new gameplay more difficult as you must experiment to ascertain the function of new buildings, units, etc.

Thanks for the feedback! I agree that the civilopedia needs more work. We can definitely fill in the "background" information for a lot of the techs, bonuses, units, etc with quotes from the Dune appendices, etc. I had posted about this on the modpack feedback thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8518269&postcount=166) earlier today. But I think that is not the area where you are suggesting we need more focus.

Did you find the Dune Wars Concepts tab of the civilopedia? It contains a few sections with key information about the concepts of the mod. If you had not found it, this is a big failure on the part of the mod, since that is where we have put the critical "orientation" information. If you found it, but it is not detailed enough, we would like to add more.

The main part of the civilopedia lists the stats for all the techs, bonuses, units, etc. Where do you go first to learn more about the tech, bonuses, units? Do you find that the "strategy" section of each unit entry is useful? Or is there some other place we should add more information?

Please help us to make the mod easier to pick up, by helping us focus on where to add information first.

The python error I mentioned earlier:


Traceback (most recent call last):

File "CvScreensInterface", line 1004, in forceScreenRedraw

File "CvMainInterface", line 3346, in redraw

File "CvMainInterface", line 7374, in updateHelpStrings

RuntimeError: unidentifiable C++ exception

Copied by hand from an ingame python exception.
I get this whenever I hold shift while mousing over any plot. It's clearly an issue with help popups. It doesn't happen when I'm hovering over black areas of the map, or other things which don't have little popups.

I have chipotle enabled, and hide python exceptions disabled

The python error I mentioned earlier:

I have seen this before but I don't know how to dig into it further and find out what is wrong. BTW, if you have logging enabled, then My Games/Beyond the Sword/LOGS contains a file PythonErr.log which contains the same exception text as the popups. It's easier to paste out of the file.

How are catchbasins supposed to work?

I've built one in every city, and the only thing that's happened is paralysing my growth because of the -3 Water.

Where are my grasslands? I have improvements all around cities, including adjacent to them.

In 1.54, no terraforming occurs until you have a reservoir (from the Arrakis paradise tech). So catchbasins do nothing until you have a reservoir built.
This will be changed in the next version.

We're in the process of moving to a change so that terraforming happens anywhere/only within your borders that has fresh water access.

And then the catchbasin will provide fresh water in a 1 tile access around cities, and the reservoir will provide fresh water in a 3 tile radius. So terraforming will occur: adjacent to wells, adjacent to catchbasin cities, or within 3 tiles of reservoir cities.

And the probability of terraforming will depend on the total number of catchbasins and reservoirs you control (probaility = 1% per turn + 0.25%*#catchbasins + 0.5#number reservoirs).

And the new terrain types will upgrade too (rugged -> rock -> anchor grass -> grasslands).

I built seven reservoirs of liet, and apparently nothing happened. I mean, the terraforming is working now, but there was no victory declaration.

And I get another python error when I look at the victory conditions screen. It also only displays mastery there.

In retrospect though, it was pretty easy to do. I just shut down my economy after getting arrakis transformation, and used my 200 :gold: per turn to buy 5/7 of the reservoirs.

A terraforming victory should probably require terraforming some % of the planet. Although I guess that would require making it possible to terraform deep desert too, which would be cool.

Mastery victory condition (which no longer actually exists) blocks all/some of the other victory conditions from functioning.

You need to start the game with the Mastery victory unchecked.

We will hopefully fix this eventually, but possibly not in the next patch. We might just remove the master victory, since we no longer use it.

But we're still considering other victory possibilities too. Is there some way to make a spice-monopoly-based victory?

And we might tweak the terraforming victory so that it requires X% of the world to be in your borders and terraformed, so the buildings are the means to the end rather than the goal itself.

In 1.54, no terraforming occurs until you have a reservoir (from the Arrakis paradise tech). So catchbasins do nothing until you have a reservoir built. This will be changed in the next version.

Let me make some minor corrections about what is in 1.5.4 and what is planned for 1.5.5. In 1.5.4, your plots may upgrade if (a) they have fresh water and (b) you follow arrakis paradise and (c) you have at least one reservoir built. Catchbasins and wells provide fresh water in a one tile radius and reservoirs provide fresh water in a two tile radius. Salt, rugged and badlands all currently upgrade. All of this except (c) is described in the 1.5.4 release note (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8498554&postcount=412).

In 1.5.5, the only change which is planned is to make (c) easier; you will only need at least one catchbasin built. This will make terraforming start much sooner. Ahriman has requested increasing the reservoir radius to 3. I have not studied the impact of this yet so I have not made this change.

In 1.5.5, the only change which is planned is to make (c) easier; you will only need at least one catchbasin built. This will make terraforming start much sooner. Ahriman has requested increasing the reservoir radius to 3. I have not studied the impact of this yet so I have not made this change.

I'd say add in the alternate requirement that, instead of being near fresh water, i can just be near another anchor grass/grassland plot, thus allowing terraforming to spread out of your territory and across the world.

Isn't the point of it generally to terraform the whole planet A mechanic which limits it almost exclusively to your own territory will never achieve that.

I'd say add in the alternate requirement that, instead of being near fresh water, i can just be near another anchor grass/grassland plot,

Its interesting, but this change was part of a deliberate technique to make fresh water access more important.

Isn't the point of it generally to terraform the whole planet

No. The intention is for terraforming only in your own territory. Territory outside cultural borders will not terraform, nor will plots of factions who do not have the Arrakis paradise civic.

Keep in mind that the sort of timeline we have is for Dune and Children of Dune and Dune Messiah. That is: the time of Paul Atreides and a little after.
It was to take ~300-400 years beyond that to terraform the planet.
We're just talking about getting to the 3% where the process becomes self sustaining.

I won very early without building a single spice improvement (see below). I would suggest making the Reservoirs of Liet much more expensive (maybe double) and enable only after industrialism.
(My game was somewhat correct in that as Paul Atreides I founded Mahdi and spurned the spice trade. He probably wouldn't have agreed with the terraforming though.:lol:)
Also, the Ixians seem to not expand very much. They are always on the bottom of the ladder.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=230358&stc=1&d=1254976588

I won very early without building a single spice improvement (see below). I would suggest making the Reservoirs of Liet much more expensive (maybe double) and enable only after industrialism.
(My game was somewhat correct in that as Paul Atreides I founded Mahdi and spurned the spice trade. He probably wouldn't have agreed with the terraforming though.:lol:)
Also, the Ixians seem to not expand very much. They are always on the bottom of the ladder.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=230358&stc=1&d=1254976588

Could you zip/post a save game from near the end? I am interested in looking at some statistics.

Also, Arrakis Transformation (required to build Reservoirs) is at the same tech tier as Industrialism; would making this change actually make it any harder to win?

I agree that the build-7-reservoirs is far easier than any other victory condition and will definitely need to be changed somehow.

Hi all and gratz for the job made so far ! It's a great mod, even destipe the flaws. :thumbsup:

I enjoyed my games with the mod and even subscribed civfan just for the pleasure of giving you some feedback. ^^

My few notes :

- I don't think very intuitive that surface water is a ressource for your cities ONLY if you didn't dig a well on it. You loose the ressource by digging a well, just the opposite of vanilla... Is it explained somewhere ? I had to destroy wells at a point, strange thing...
- I did conquest an ennemy city with al the Ixian unhappiness buildings... My fault, I should have watch the details of the city but it made the war rather difficult to continue... You're not into "events", and I don't know if it's difficult, but offering the possibility to destroy these "evil" building when the city is conquered would be cool. When the choice is "conquer unhappiness buildings OR raze a holy city", it's a tough choice.

- For me the Dune books are a lot about spies. Of course there are big fight with the Sardaukars and the Fremen but more important are the traitor doctor, the assassins, infiltrations and constant paranoia. So I used a lot of infiltrators in my game. It worked very well as improvements are really long to build. But :
> If my neighbourg doesn't want to open borders, and is on his own "island", how could I send him spies ? In vanilla you have these special ships that can enter borders with spies (and GP and missionaries) aboard. Nothing like that here or did I miss it ?
> Spies can't go on desert wastes. So they can't sabotage spice harvester. These installations are supposed to be strategical and should be destroyed somehow even when on "peace". Ok, you can use the "spy or convert when on board" trick, but it's weird, and only works with open borders. Maybe a special unit could be dedicated to this critical activity ?
> I'm not sure but can infiltrators "steal" an outpost ? Would be great when it control access to spice !

I won't talk much about the IA which could be improved of course but I imagine it's planned somehow. Just one thing : Harkonen's slaves : it's a nice idea, but the IA likes to kill slaves on its territory, even if it means to expose its units out of city. Juste try with a thopter : you kill a unit, get a slave, retreat, the IA sends an unit to kill the slave, you kill it, get a slave, retreat... It shouldn't pay too much attention to these "free and non threatening' units during a war.

(sorry for my baaaad English.... )

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you're enjoying the mod.


- I don't think very intuitive that surface water is a ressource for your cities ONLY if you didn't dig a well on it.

The groundwater resource doesn't actually do anything. It is a remnant of an old system that we should probably remove. There is no reason to ever build a city on a groundwater resource.

I did conquest an ennemy city with al the Ixian unhappiness buildings...

This buildings are being changed, and they're being tied into the Technocracy religion. And they won't cause unhappiness outside their own city.

In vanilla you have these special ships that can enter borders with spies (and GP and missionaries) aboard. Nothing like that here or did I miss it ?

This is an interesting point that I hadn't thought about. I've never really used the spies much.
There are lots of ideas we had for tweaking spy missions (my two favorite ideas are having the BeneG spy have an espionage mission that works like an Influence-Driven-War pillage to weaken cultural influence on a tile, and a Sabotage mission for Ordos that damages vehicles in a tile), but espionage is hard to change codewise and get the AI to use well.
We would have to think about whether the AI can sensibly use transports with spies, or whether it uses spies amphibiously at all. Or maybe spies should get desert movement.

Maybe a special unit could be dedicated to this critical activity ?
I don't see sabotaging harvester improvements as being very critical, particularly when they're such transient temporary things in the mod, with low build times.

I'm not sure but can infiltrators "steal" an outpost ?
I don't really see how that would work, logically or codewise. Is the infiltrator bribing the troops there?

the IA likes to kill slaves on its territory, even if it means to expose its units out of city

Yeah, this is a problem with the vanilla civ AI, it loooves killing workers, and prioritizes those over anything else, presumably because it sees a combat win with 100% chance.
A great tactic in vanilla civ is often to sacrifice a worker to pull an invading stack out of position to buy you time to whittle it down more.
No easy fix for this I think. Maybe captured slaves should appear in the capital of the civ who generates them, or in the nearest city if the civ that generates them, rather than the tile they're captured on?
The main AI improvement for this mod has been better transport use and amphibious invasions.

(sorry for my baaaad English.... )
Your English is very clear. Much more so than half the native speakers who post on web forums :-)

Hi all and gratz for the job made so far! I enjoyed my games with the mod and even subscribed civfan just for the pleasure of giving you some feedback.

Welcome! Did you find out about the mod through moddb.com, or were you already lurking on civfan?

- I don't think very intuitive that surface water is a ressource for your cities ONLY if you didn't dig a well on it. You loose the ressource by digging a well, just the opposite of vanilla... Is it explained somewhere ? I had to destroy wells at a point, strange thing...

What benefit do you get by destroying a well? The well increases the water yield of the plot. I can't think of anything which happens for an empty ground water plot.

- I did conquest an enemy city with al the Ixian unhappiness buildings... offering the possibility to destroy these "evil" building when the city is conquered would be cool.

Excellent point. I had not thought of that. I'll look into how to accomplish it. In other mods, or in vanilla, are there events which allow you to choose some buildings to destroy?

If my neighbour doesn't want to open borders, and is on his own "island", how could I send him spies ? ... Spies can't go on desert wastes.

I had thought of that, but hadn't done anything about it yet. There is a promotion "suspensor" which is automatically granted to suspensor units; it grants double movement on desert. I was thinking of making this available to spies, at a certain tech level. This would represent a small personal suspensor craft that the spy would use. I have to check how this interacts with the logistics line of spy promotions; I don't accidentally want spies to have a movement rate of 12 or something.

Ok, you can use the "spy or convert when on board" trick

Ah-ha! More annoying bugs related to all terrain transports.

Harkonen's slaves : it's a nice idea, but the IA likes to kill slaves on its territory, even if it means to expose its units out of city. Juste try with a thopter : you kill a unit, get a slave, retreat, the IA sends an unit to kill the slave, you kill it, get a slave, retreat...

Interesting point. When you make peace with somebody, the game pushes all your units to the closest point outside his borders. I am not sure what happens when you make peace with somebody, who is on an island, and your units don't have boats available. Does the game drown them? It may be reasonable to push the slave outside borders even if they drown. Or maybe you never generate slaves when inside their own territory. What do you think?

The groundwater resource doesn't actually do anything. It is a remnant of an old system that we should probably remove. There is no reason to ever build a city on a groundwater resource.

I'm confused about this. There is the Groundwater bonus that you dig wells on, there was the old old Water resource but I think that's been gone for a while...

In vanilla you have these special ships that can enter borders with spies (and GP and missionaries) aboard. Nothing like that here or did I miss it ?

We don't really have a Privateer equivalent - it's a good point. Perhaps some stealth units with Hidden Nationality would be appropriate.

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you're enjoying the mod.

The groundwater resource doesn't actually do anything. It is a remnant of an old system that we should probably remove. There is no reason to ever build a city on a groundwater resource.

This buildings are being changed, and they're being tied into the Technocracy religion. And they won't cause unhappiness outside their own city.

Oh, allright then ^^.


This is an interesting point that I hadn't thought about. I've never really used the spies much.
There are lots of ideas we had for tweaking spy missions (my two favorite ideas are having the BeneG spy have an espionage mission that works like an Influence-Driven-War pillage to weaken cultural influence on a tile, and a Sabotage mission for Ordos that damages vehicles in a tile), but espionage is hard to change codewise and get the AI to use well.
We would have to think about whether the AI can sensibly use transports with spies, or whether it uses spies amphibiously at all. Or maybe spies should get desert movement.

Spies with desert movement would be strange : they aren't supposed to be able to walk in the desert without attracting the worm (for non-fremen civs). Could spies "bombard" their spy actions with a 1 or 2 range ? (well, must be hard to spend espionnage points that way, never seen that in any mod).


I don't see sabotaging harvester improvements as being very critical, particularly when they're such transient temporary things in the mod, with low build times.


My view of the game was : Spice > bulbs > tech lead > win the war. Slow down your ennemy's research can be critical, AND it's the main technique used in the books (very few real battle, a lot of guerilla, sabottage of harvesters : see Paul vs Harkonnens or Leto II vs Aalia).


I don't really see how that would work, logically or codewise. Is the infiltrator bribing the troops there?

Well, er... the outpost is just an outpost, right ? You don't have to leave permanent troops here to keep your cultural domination on the (small) area. Actually I won a few game on duel maps (3-4 IA), with only 3-4 cities, and many outposts to harvest spice and limit the IA land. I thought it was weird that the IA did not tried to do anything against that. My capital is far away, there is not always troops around. It should not be hard to take possession of an empty outpost.


No easy fix for this I think. Maybe captured slaves should appear in the capital of the civ who generates them, or in the nearest city if the civ that generates them, rather than the tile they're captured on?
The main AI improvement for this mod has been better transport use and amphibious invasions.

The IA is not into oversea warfare, I understand that must not be an easy thing...

If the slaves appeared in the capital they would maybe be too powerfull, esp in the future if they can be used to give hammers to production (seen somewhere on this forum, still planed ?). A Harkonnen ends a war with dozens of slaves...

Is it possible to disband automatically any slave that ends his turn out of cultural border AND without a military unit on the same square ? Before the IA round of course. They're not that stupid. :p

EDIT :

Yes, I'm a lurker on civfan for some time ^^. I am a Civ player for a long time (I spent many of my youth nights on Civ I), but only tryed mods recently as I used to play Vanilla until very recently when I got BTW (yeah, I'm late ^^).

The groundwater is a tradable ressource. It does nothing ?


Interesting point. When you make peace with somebody, the game pushes all your units to the closest point outside his borders. I am not sure what happens when you make peace with somebody, who is on an island, and your units don't have boats available. Does the game drown them? It may be reasonable to push the slave outside borders even if they drown. Or maybe you never generate slaves when inside their own territory. What do you think?

units are teleported at the closest tile out of your ennemy borders, neutral, yours or someone who grants you open borders. You can cross water or anything like that.
By the way, you DO generate slaves by fighting a thopter on the sea, the next round it is teleported to the closest tile (not necessary yours) (weird, but there is no "drowning").


Excellent point. I had not thought of that. I'll look into how to accomplish it. In other mods, or in vanilla, are there events which allow you to choose some buildings to destroy?
"Random" events that take place ONLY if you have a given building exist. Add a high probability and the player should be prompted next round after the conquest, or at least have good odds to have the event on day or another. Hm, I don't know how to prevent it to happen if YOU built the Ixian Building.

Excellent point. I had not thought of that. I'll look into how to accomplish it. In other mods, or in vanilla, are there events which allow you to choose some buildings to destroy?


It would be easy enough to set the Technocracy factories (and all of the religious buildings really) to auto-destroy on city capture.

I was thinking of making this available to spies, at a certain tech level.
I think the problem is more likely to be an AI one rather than anything else. Do we know anything much about the espionage AI?

When you make peace with somebody, the game pushes all your units to the closest point outside his borders. I am not sure what happens when you make peace with somebody, who is on an island, and your units don't have boats available. Does the game drown them? It may be reasonable to push the slave outside borders even if they drown. Or maybe you never generate slaves when inside their own territory. What do you think?

I think you're missing the point.
The problem is, when the Harkonnen are at war, they are constantly generating a bunch of slave units. The problem with these is that the AI has a fixation with attacking and capturing every slave/worker unit it can when they are left undefended and in range of their units. This tends to pull the AI's units out of position, and into a location where they can easily be killed. Which generates another slave....

So its an easy way for a human player to bait the AI into wasting all its units, without actually losing units yourself.

Its nothing to do with peacetime displacement, its just a weakness in the target priority of the AI.

Like I said, I think the best solutions are to have the generated slaves appear back in hope territory, not on the battlefield.

There is the Groundwater bonus that you dig wells on, there was the old old Water resource but I think that's been gone for a while...

Its not actually gone. There is a groundwater resource that isn't provided provided by the well improvement, but still shows up when a well is built directly on top of the groundwater feature (like how building a city on other resources gives them to you).
You see the AI sometimes with 1-2 groundwater resources available for traide in the diplomacy screen. The resources have no effect on anything, but they're still there.

We don't really have a Privateer equivalent - it's a good point. Perhaps some stealth units with Hidden Nationality would be appropriate.

I think he's arguing for units like Caravels, transports who can enter enemy territory without open borders. They don't need to be attack/combat units.

There also need to be some ways of spotting invisible units - it was a particular problem with the Ordos Saboteur unit, who was an invisible combat unit, and could easily roam through your empire at will killing all your workers, and there was nothing you could do to stop it. I recommend giving "spots invisible units in adjacent tiles" to all thopter units, to spies and to Reverend Mothers.

Slow down your ennemy's research can be critical

But given how easily a destroyed harvester improvement can be rebuilt, the effect is trivial, so its not really worth a spy mission. Each individual spice resource is still only contributing a handful of commerce.

You don't have to leave permanent troops here to keep your cultural domination on the (small) area.

Well, my impression was than an outpost absolutely has a small permanent garrison of soldiers.

thought it was weird that the IA did not tried to do anything against that.

Well, this is a problem with the vanilla AI, it doesn't really pillage much. The AI attacks cities, it doesn't really perform raids.

It should not be hard to take possession of an empty outpost.
Its not; if you're at war, just pillage it. Buy why should spies be able to do this?

If the slaves appeared in the capital they would maybe be too powerfull
I don't see that they would be too powerful. All they can do is build one improvement, and then they die (worked to death). Getting lots of slaves is supposed to be a powerful effect; its the main Harkonnen mechanic. Every faction should have a powerful mechanic.

Is it possible to disband automatically any slave that ends his turn out of cultural border AND without a military unit on the same square ?

The AI wouldn't understand this at all. It captures a slave when raiding, and sends the slave back home... oops, he's unescorted, he gets disbanded.
And an individual slave isn't worth escorting. All it can do is build 1 improvement.

Teleporting them out of the conflict zone is more likely to work IMO.

But given how easily a destroyed harvester improvement can be rebuilt, the effect is trivial, so its not really worth a spy mission. Each individual spice resource is still only contributing a handful of commerce.

I disagree with that. Just keep sending spies to an ennemy and he WILL fall behind. Well it worked for me, destroying his cottages, and mines first then harvester. I usually play dual map, so you have less Spice overall : maybe it's not working on bigger maps. I'll try a normal size next time.

Well, my impression was than an outpost absolutely has a small permanent garrison of soldiers.

Ok, I had not the same feeling about outpost.
I thought it was rather like supplies caches. Like when Leto asks Liet the autorisation to use the supplies outposts that are under his guard as an imperial ecologist (but actually serve the terraforming process). Some water, weapons, in a good hidden spot for observation, maybe a guardian or two, like scouts, but no real military power by itself. If it's different in your mind, np.

Well it worked for me, destroying his cottages, and mines first then harvester

Destroying cottages and mines can be effective; cottages take a long time to regrow, and advanced mines and turbines take many turns to rebuild.
But harvesters build in only 3 turns, so destroying them is easily remedied.

The mod also isn't really designed to be balanced for duel sized maps, its aimed at small-medium size.

If it's different in your mind

My perception is that these are a fort (this is originally what they were called). Hence the large defensive bonus, and their ability to project influence into the surrounding area.
I hadn't thought about them being a supply dump, though I suppose that would also make some sense.

When you make peace with somebody, the game pushes all your units to the closest point outside his borders. I am not sure what happens when you make peace with somebody, who is on an island, and your units don't have boats available. Does the game drown them? It may be reasonable to push the slave outside borders even if they drown. Or maybe you never generate slaves when inside their own territory. What do you think?

I think you're missing the point.
The problem is, when the Harkonnen are at war, they are constantly generating a bunch of slave units. The problem with these is that the AI has a fixation with attacking and capturing every slave/worker unit it can when they are left undefended and in range of their units. This tends to pull the AI's units out of position, and into a location where they can easily be killed. Which generates another slave....

I am not missing the point, I am proposing a solution. There is some code already which pushes a unit outside cultural borders. It is executed when you make peace. I am proposing that when you capture a slave inside an enemy's cultural border, the same code should be executed on the slave to push it outside cultural borders.

I am proposing that when you capture a slave inside an enemy's cultural border, the same code should be executed on the slave to push it outside cultural borders.

Ah! Then I missed the point. That seems reasonable, but so does putting the slaves into a city.

Units don't drown when peace is declared, they get pushed to the closest legitimate land tile, either in your own territory, in neutral territory or in territory of another player with whom you have open borders.
It doesn't care about whether the tiles are connected by land or not.

Ah! Then I missed the point. That seems reasonable, but so does putting the slaves into a city.

From the ""reality"" standpoint I can justify pushing slaves outside the border. I find it harder to justify teleporting the unit across the map to the capitol, or even the nearest friendly city. Also if the unit appears somewhere else, not immediately on the screen, the user may not discover it until next turn. They may be confused about where the unit came from.

The other option I proposed was that if a Harkonnen attacks a unit in that unit's home territory and wins, then no slave would be created. You can imagine the enemy soldiers vanishing into friendly territory instead of standing around to be enslaved. Which do you think is better?

Also if the unit appears somewhere else, not immediately on the screen, the user may not discover it until next turn. They may be confused about where the unit came from.

I don't think pushing outside borders is any less confusing than pushing into a the nearest city, and pushing into a city makes the ability much more useful particularly for inter-island assaults. The slaves aren't very useful if the AI isn't good at transporting them somewhere useful after creating them. The slaves need to be useful. Pushing them outside borders can easily end up putting them into really weird places where they can get stuck (eg in a tile on an enemy island that isn't covered by their culture, that could even be surrounded by enemy culture), or won't feasibly make it back to friendly territory.

And pushing into the capital means the player can easily find them.

Plus, with their 1 move rate, it would take them forever to walk home on many maps.


You can imagine the enemy soldiers vanishing into friendly territory instead of standing around to be enslaved.

This doesn't make sense to me. Soldiers are captured in wartime all the time. The only differnce is, normally they just go into POW camps, whereas the Harkonnen enslave them and put them to work. Half the point of the ability is to be able to launch offensive slave raids, I see no reason why the ability shouldn't work in enemy territory.

If the soldiers could escape enslavement, then they could escape being destroyed as well, and withdraw.

Besides, its likely to be even easier to rationalize capturing slaves in the Dune universe than many other SF settings, because in Dune the combat is mostly very close range or melee, because of shields.

I don't think pushing outside borders is any less confusing than pushing into a the nearest city.

I think we will get questions like, "How did this free unit appear in my city?". I think it is realistic to need transport for the captured slaves, or use them locally to where they were captured.

If I can figure out how the "peace push" works I will try using it. If I can't figure it out, or if players try that and don't like it, then I will try teleporting them to the nearest friendly city.

I think teleporting to nearest city will be much more useful than to the capital. After all, the nearest city should be the one most recently captured (and presumably pillaged), so your new slaves can just rebuild them with their lives. :D

Can I suggest a "food" benefit to spice? Right now, there are many other ways to get gold, so spice is not really absolutely necessary. Spice is supposed to prolong life also, so why not make it synergistic with water to make it more valuable? E.g. 3 spices equals 1 water. This will also make Arrakis Paradise a more daunting civic.

I think we will get questions like, "How did this free unit appear in my city?".

Then create a help text. I agree its not ideal, but then nothing is.

I think it is realistic to need transport for the captured slaves, or use them locally to where they were captured.

I don't think this is a good idea when the AI is bad at transports. Remember that the AI will never amphibiously transport worker units. This is why we made workers able to cross desert.
As an alternative; bump slaves up to 2 moves, and let them cross desert tiles, just like normal workers.
Then I would be fine with just bumping them out of culture, rather than to a city.


Spice is supposed to prolong life also, so why not make it synergistic with water to make it more valuable? E.g. 3 spices equals 1 water.

This doesn't make much sense. Spice is a geriatric drug, and extends the life of the tiny handful of the very rich who can afford large doses of it, but it doesn't let you survive without water, and there is never enough of it to have a significant impact on the lives of the general population.

It would also weaken the interesting differentiation between Paradise and Spice economy. As it is, one is for population growth, the other for commerce yield.

I think the Atreides are overpowered at start. Having a worker at start makes them grow much quicker than the other civs. 1 worker does not equal 2 scouts (because you can't grow when you build workers). Maybe get rid of their starting soldier (since you're going to get free soldiers anyway).

OK, I see the difference between Spice and Paradise. But then, for symmetry, shouldn't there be a spice "victory"? E.g. control 30% of all the spice on Arrakis AND run Spice as a civic, after you reach a certain tech (to avoid the victory condition triggering too early). Sure, spice gets depleted and some cannot be reached (e.g. spice islands in the desert), but surely conquest of other people's spice will count?

We're thinking some kind of spice related/economic victory.

I agree that Atreides shouldn't get a free worker to start, and I still really hate the whole free unit thing (it makes them a quantity-not-quality army, which is the opposite of what they should be).

It seems strange but Noone devlaring war in my game. Some civil wars happening, very odd.
So far i like game veeeeery much, just hope ai ill be nasty boy and attack at least.

Also seems that AI not prioritizes some important wonders, like lib.

*Civil* wars? That shouldn't be happening, not in any of the latest versions since most of Revolutions was deactivated.

Depending on which version you're using, you may not be getting wars because diplomatic relations are too high because everyone is the same religion. I find a fair number of wars though at higher difficulty levels.

As for Wonders; depends what difficulty level you're playing. I play at Emperor, and hardly ever manage to build any wonders. The library I can sometimes get by prioritizing education early.

Wonders are also going to get a total rework, but we don't really have a lot of great ideas for wonders or effects of them at the moment. The existing wonders are all just renamed vanilla wonders.

Thanks for the feedback! Are you playing version 1.5.4? In this version, we have partially introduced a new religion system. In this system, just about everybody converts to the same religion. As a result, everybody likes each other. Do you see that in your diplomacy screen? In the next release, 1.5.5, which may come this weekend, the religion system may have more diversity.

Yes i playing 1.5.4 version. Noone wants to attack me, and civil wars all the time. They have civil wars and i have some popups with it. I dont like them, but i do like new religions , also i playing always with Choose religion > please can you give religion preference to leaders?, lets say Corrino will found Imperial if they tech religion dicovery first wit hthis option. Because playing as Tleilaxu and seeing that someone other found Tleilaxu Supermacy is kinda odd.

Another bug i found when playing as Corringo, that When i teched Mauler , i got regular Master Guardsmen, and not my UU Militia.

Also i found its runni9ng Revolution Mod (civil wars?) by default - But i dont know how to disable it.

Its strange that Revolutions and civil wars are still activated, I thought they had been deactivated somehow. You can do this manually by going into your ini file Documents/My Games/Beyond the Sword/CivilizationIV, open the file, go down to game options, eg

; Game Options
GameOptions = biglongnumber

then make sure that all every digit of the biglongnumber is 0 - or at least that the last 6 digits or so are 0. Then save the file.

The Revolution mod will still run (we use some features of it, like influence-driven war), but the civil wars type features will be disabled.

We won't have Choose religions because the religions are going to be made very different, with lots of unique features and spread mechanics. These mechanics will be influenced by where in the tech tree they go, so for example it would be too powerful to be able to choose Quizarate as an early game religion.
Also, Tleilaxu will start with their religion, and no-one else will be able to adopt it.

As for Corrino not getting UUs.... thats very strange. I wonder if an updated UU file was in one of the intermediate patches somewhere and not included in 1.5.4?

Also few icons for religion ad spice missing, i find some icons just shown wih number (white ring and black number like 102 or 21)

so far its great game just waiting till you twek all things , enhance religions and make ai being aggressive and tough.
(there were 2 religions and no wars until late game, i was isloated , developed rovers, and started massive conquest)

Another bug i found when playing as Corringo, that When i teched Mauler , i got regular Master Guardsmen, and not my UU Militia.

Thanks for finding this bug! The civilopedia shows that Master Guardsman and Imperial Militia are related, and it shows Imperial Militia as the UU of Corrino. However, there is a small error in the XML file for Corrino. In that file, it says that Imperial Militia is an upgrade of *Crysknife Fighter*, which is wrong. I have fixed it in the files for release 1.5.5.

Also i found its runni9ng Revolution Mod (civil wars?) by default - But i dont know how to disable it.

Ahriman has given the answer of how to disable it. I guess you were playing a different mod, which had a number of game options, and your ini file had those options turned on. We have had a lot of trouble from some of the base modcomps that were all stirred together to make Dune Wars 1.0, and we keep trying to track these problems down and eliminate them. I also thought there was no way to have civil wars turned on, even if you wanted, but I guess I was wrong.

I think that AI production handling should limit the number of suspension transport they build. I was recently attacked by 2 suspension platforms and 10-15 transports, and while they are str 2 AI suicided them against my 3 hardened swordsmen...

One of the bugs I had somewhere was that suspensor platforms should be made unable to attack.

This needs to be a priority, if it isn't already in 1.5.5.

You have suggested a point solution, and I would prefer to find the underlying reason and fix that. First, why is the AI building so many transports? Second, why is it suiciding them? I am afraid that simply making them unable to attack will cause some other weird behavior. I haven't taken the time to do that experiment. The XML change is very easy; for all the suspensor craft, find the line:

<bOnlyDefensive>0</bOnlyDefensive>

And change it to 1. If you look at the scout unit, you will see this flag already set.

If this is a major problem then we should ask Cephalo to investigate the issue.

First, why is the AI building so many transports? Second, why is it suiciding them? I am afraid that simply making them unable to attack will cause some other weird behavior.

I think its making a lot of transports because it needs them. Maybe suspensor transports should go up to transport capacity 3? Otherwise you really need too many transports to move
As for why its suiciding them; I think that is part of their assault AI. They run up, drop their troops, and then the AI throws the whole stack at the city.

I would have thought that if they couldn't attack, that the AI would just dump the stuff out from them and then move them back to base. Obviously thats the desired behavior.

I agree that we should ask Cephalo to investigate, since its likely to be partly due to his AI changes.

Maybe suspensor transports should go up to transport capacity 3

I noticed in your last unit design they had capacity 3 so it is presumably an oversight that they don't. I have been using Scout Thopters instead of them as they seemed a redundant unit - same capacity, same speed. So, I think increasing them to 3 capacity is a good idea. They should really be the intermediate transport between scout thopter and light carryall.

As for why its suiciding them; I think that is part of their assault AI. They run up, drop their troops, and then the AI throws the whole stack at the city.

I guess that makes sense. This does not arise with vanilla galleys, etc because they cannot attack cities anyway. Making them defensive only is an easy experiment to try.

BTW, we are getting a lot of good feedback in all these different threads, and it is quite challenging to keep track of it all. With the "AHRxx" numbering, at least I can do a forum search each week and update the sheet with all these good ideas. Otherwise many of them are getting lost.

AHR23
Suspensor transport needs to be unable to attack; after dropping its cargo (nice work on the AI cephalo!) the AI suicides its stack of transports against my city defenders.

From the modpack thread.

Also note that I think I doubled AHR35. All buildings except desalination need to be unbuildable on salt pans.

The world tiles are not really center. All the units and building dont seem to be in the center of a grid square. Here's a Screenie

Our threads have wandered a bit, I think the last discussion on settler build speed was in the incremental patch thread.

Ahriman has commented that early game expansion is too fast, and he has requested multiple times to make settlers more expensive. I want to make two points: DW settlers cost the same as vanilla, and what we should do is make early game water a little more rare.

Settler cost: in both vanilla and DW, a settler costs 100h, and it is built by adding your food(water) surplus to your hammer yield. Start a new DW game, found a city, and go to the city screen to build a settler. Hover over the settler button and it tells you the cost, 100h. Look at your water and hammer surplus and add them. In my game I had 3w city +1w from a hill, and 1h city + 2h from a hill, with one pop that gives a 2w surplus and 3h for 5, and a settler takes 20 turns. I did the same experiment in vanilla, settler costs 100h, I had 2 food surplus and 2 hammers, and the settler takes 25 turns. Yes, it is longer, but because of the higher water surplus in DW.

There are three early game improvements which yield water: dew collector, well, and windtrap. Each of them increases the terrain yield by 2. Once you have a couple of these improvements, you have a high water surplus. So either your population grows fast or you can build settlers fast.

Suppose we make all three of these yield one water initially instead of two, and add back the second water with a tech in the third or fourth tier. This guarantees that mid game city water yield will be the same, but decreases early water yield. For example, Desert Plantation could increase dew collector yield, and Arrakis Habitation could increase well yield. Sand Farms already increases windtrap yield; I am not sure why that one exactly. We could either permanently decrease windtrap yield, or find some other two techs to increase its yield.

What do you think?

and what we should do is make early game water a little more rare.

A fair point. Its worth trying.

I also feel that deep wells come to early.

I suggest also that we decrease the base yield of plantations (some of these give yields of +6!!), and add it back at sand farms.

How about:
i) drop well yield by 1 water, add it back at desert engineering
ii) drop windtrap yield by 1 water, add it back at arrakis habitation
iii) drop dew collector yield by 1 water, add it back at desert plantation
iv) move deep wells from climate controls to water discipline.
v) cut the yield of all plantations by 1h2c, and add it back at sand farms.
vi) move the +1 water for windtraps from sandfarms to desert industry.

This will have a *large* impact on the early game.

And while we're moving things around:
a) move open borders from desert engineering to dune topography
b) move centers world map from desert engineering to dune topography
c) move gold trading from climate controls to protected trade
d) move vassal states from social mobility to imperialism
e) remove the observatory building (this will help fix the early game tech explosion; why do we have 2 +25% beaker buildings right next to each other? and why do we need an observatory? Lets leave it library and university).
f) move tech trading from suspensor devices to education.
g) increase the beaker cost of education by ~20%.
h) increase the beaker cost of dune topography by ~20%.
i) increase the beaker cost of arrakis habitation by ~20%.

And as discussed before:
j) move dew collectors to desert survival
k) make mining an AND requirement for water transportation
l) make fanaticism an AND requirement for harsh conditioning, OR increase HC beaker cost by 40%.
m) move feudal estate to caste systems. Move fiefdom to Imperialism. move landsraad outpost to great houses. move landsraad directorate to CHOAM. move temple of muad'dib to jihad. move Golden Path to Golden Path tech.

n) consider merging the sayyadinas tech into the Faith tech. We don't really gain much from having both.

From my experiences i can say that none of those changes will impact the game negatively, i though alot of sam same things while playing. Observatory - How observatory helps to resereach in Dune world? while you have spice and all those Guilds and Folding space? I dunno....
So, pretty much agreed on all things i had experience with.
Yep, also i think all those changes will improve AI performance, because of bit twisted priorities, anyways Human make better priorities than AI, and by decreasing -1 water from early tech improvement it will lessen gap between human and stupid ai which didnt prioritized necessary improvement tech.
Btw its very important to give new tech priorities to AI.

Several problems have been reported with peaks. Here is a status update.

1. Resource, eg nitrates, on peak fail to connect with cities (AHR39). Actually this is probably because resources have an "enables" tech (TechCityTrade in the xml) which prevents a resource from connecting early. This is set to some random values in the current xml. You can see which tech this is in the pedia entry for the resource. In particular, nitrates is enabled by Desert Engineering. Give yourself this tech, and you will see the resource connecting. I have fixed this in 1.6 by removing all the "enables" techs. I am not sure what purpose it serves anyway.

2. Quads can enter mesa, even though the xml and unit help says they cannot. This is true; it doesn't matter whether they are in cultural borders or which other units are selected. Mesa is an altitude, not a terrain, so we cannot use the xml TerrainImpassable flag to affect this. I will try an sdk change with a new xml flag.

3. Turbines and cottages can be built on mesa, even though the xml says they cannot. This is also because mesa is an altitude. It has some terrain type such as grass associated with it, even if you cannot see it, and the turbine/cottage is allowed on that terrain type. All of the "makes valid" conditions are logically OR'd together so if the terrain type allows it, that is enough.

For 2,3 I have posted onto the mountains modcomp thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=311211), and added my proposed solution. Each one requires a new xml flag.

Here is my question/concern. Making this suddenly work seems like an improvement, but may cause major gameplay problems. For example, you may be unable to reach a target city with suspensor units without going a long way around some mesas. Koma has promised a major homeworld screen update today or tomorrow; as soon as that comes, I was planning to upload 1.6.

If I finish the new flags, should I put them into the major 1.6 release or hold it for a separate 1.6.1?

1. Resource, eg nitrates, on peak fail to connect with cities (AHR39). Actually this is probably because resources have an "enables" tech (TechCityTrade in the xml) which prevents a resource from connecting early. This is set to some random values in the current xml. You can see which tech this is in the pedia entry for the resource. In particular, nitrates is enabled by Desert Engineering. Give yourself this tech, and you will see the resource connecting. I have fixed this in 1.6 by removing all the "enables" techs. I am not sure what purpose it serves anyway.


The reason for that functionality is so that if you lack the tech to harvest something, like bananas, and you happen to capture a city from a civ that can build plantations, then you don't get the advantage of the banana. Same if your culture grows over a plantation that you aren't supposed to be able to build.

1. Resource, eg nitrates, on peak fail to connect with cities (AHR39). Actually this is probably because resources have an "enables" tech (TechCityTrade in the xml) which prevents a resource from connecting early.

Hmm. I feel a bit stupid if thats all it was. But maybe not so much since the allowable techs aren't particularly obvious.
I do understand the purpose for them in general, but I don't think we should use them here; I think instead that if we're going to have resources activated by partcular techs, we should just hide the resource until that tech is available (like how crystal is hidden) and then activate them then.
I'll report if I see this not happening again despite the tech.

I thought I remembered at least on some occasions quads being unable to enter mesas or peaks, but maybe I am wrong.

Making this suddenly work seems like an improvement, but may cause major gameplay problems. For example, you may be unable to reach a target city with suspensor units without going a long way around some mesas.

I agree that movement blocking can cause some unforseen problems. I'm not so worried about suspensors; I think with suspensors you *should* have to go around (later game you should have carryalls anyway) and you won't have to go that far around. A bit more worrisome with roller/scorpion vehicles (xian walkers shoudl be able to enter peaks). Still by itself not such a problem, since mesas are broken pretty regularly (even in continous lines of mesa, you can cross them if the measas are on a diagonal).
The biggest issue is likely to be that an AI stack containing a mixture of units could get messed up by trying to keep the stack together, so the AI ended up sending its infantry units around the long way, or of not putting its infantry units on mesa tiles with their high defensive bonus (which is what you should optimally do; sit next to a city on a defensive mesa tile, bombing its walls until they are down, then assault).

If I finish the new flags, should I put them into the major 1.6 release or hold it for a separate 1.6.1?

If you can get the terrain working in time, I'd put that into 1.6. Unit access seems to be lower priority to me; if you get it to work, maybe disable suspensor access for now but not vehicles.

So, I have implemented the xml flag which prevents an improvement from being built on peak/mesa. I set this flag for cottages and for turbines. The original motivation for preventing cottages and turbines on mesa was to let the AI choose mines over turbines. But, now that I have done this, it bothers me that turbines are allowed in sink (down out of the wind) but not allowed on mesa (in the wind). Does that bother anybody else?

It certainly bothers me, removing the turbines from mesa is only a temporary fix. Honestly, we need to rethink turbines vs solar farms vs mines.

An ideal design would have all three improvements useful, and built by the AI.

At the moment
a) Tubines 1h1c outclasses mines 1h except on bonus resources
b) solar farms are almost never built by the AI because it is afraid of the -1 water penalty even though water income on a tile can't go below 1
c) turbines and mines must be upgraded with tech, whereas solar farms increase yeilds automatically from new techs, making the solar farm a better deal in terms of worker input time.
d) level 2 mines come in the midgame, but level 2 turbines and the first solar farm boost come quite late.

There's no obvious design that fixes all these and keeps them all interesting.

As an alternative, how about:
i) Surface/deep/core mines, buildable only on mesa and bonus resources, give +2/+3/+4 hammers. Get 1 extra hammer with nitrates and crystals, and 2 extra commerce with diamonds.
Build time 4 turns/8 turns/8turns.
ii) Turbines. Buildable on mesa or flatland, but not in sinks. Turbine1/turbine2/turbine3 give 1h1c/2h1c/3h2c Build time 4 turns/8turns/8turns. Move turbine 2 to a slightly earlier tech (I don't have the tree in front of me).
iii) Solar farms. Buildable on flatland and in sinks, not on mesa. Gives +2 hammers.
Build time 7 turns. Gets +1 commerce with tech1, gets +1 hammers with tech2. Cannot be built on anchor grass or grasslands (clouds make them not work well).

Another thing to consider is making a civic or 2 that boosts solar farms and turbines. We already have boosters for mines, cottages, and specialists. This is the missing one I guess.

we need to rethink turbines vs solar farms vs mines

This might be a less is more situation. It seems like the role of these improvements always ends up overlapping. If something doesn't have a clear distinct purpose in the mod, it is often better to drop it. Do we really need so many varieties of improvement? What does each one add?

Excellent point. Clearly mines have a purpose, of connecting resources. Both windmills and solar farms are for providing hammer bonuses on otherwise useless tiles. Perhaps we do not need both. In this case, let us delete solar farms and the related solar energy tech.

One can argue that although there is bright sun to work with, the storms damage the large, flat surfaces of solar panels too easily. I don't recall reference to either solar or wind energy in the books.

Well, if nothing else a little interest.

Vanilla has:
farm
cottage
mine
workshop
windmill
waterwheel
lumbermill
road/railway

We have:
cottage
mine
turbine
solar farm

Cut one of those, and we're down to 3 non-bonus improvements. Pretty boring!

Well there are reasons we don't have equivalents of all the vanilla improvements.

farm - we tried the qanat improvement but it was lame and was cut
workshop - this was reskinned as solar farm
windmill - this was reskinned as turbine
waterwheel - we have no rivers
lumbermill - we have no forests
road/railway - we don't want these as they are un-Dune

If we want more of a range, perhaps we should look at a water producing improvement again, or think about a feature we could add that might be exploited to have the equivalent of waterwheel/lumbermill.

I dont think that Dune need more, thats not boring at all ,its already too much i dont build all of them either and feel good with this. Also we have special resource imporovements (Deep well), and finally, we have UPGRADEABLE improvements. Thats alot of mechanics and gameplay involved with improving your improvements (huh :P). "More" does not always means "better".

Cut one of those, and we're down to 3 non-bonus improvements. Pretty boring!

I'm not so sure. I hardly ever build windmill, watermill, lumbermill in vanilla, and I only remember building workshop occasionally. Apart from the fact that they have some slightly different limitations on placement, does it really add that much?

If we want more of a range, perhaps we should look at a water producing improvement again, or think about a feature we could add that might be exploited to have the equivalent of waterwheel/lumbermill.

im all for having a forest like feature...make the terrain less boring :)

Well there are reasons we don't have equivalents of all the vanilla improvements.

I understand why we don't have those particular improvements, my point was that we want to retain some variety as much as possible.

Turbines vs solar farms are really all the variety we have left. And having turbines on ridges and solar farms in sinks seems like another good way to add more variety.

There is very very little strategic choice left in improvement construction. In vanilla you can customize and balance your choice of food, hammers and commerce, and have a wide range of visuals. Here, its almost a no brainer what you will build on every tile. Bonus resource? Build the bonus. Maximize windtraps. Otherwise; next to a well? Cottage it. Not next to a well? turbine or solar farm.

I don't think a forest-feature makes sense in Dune. I really *like* the barren feel with no vegetation around. Removing tubers was a very good decision.

I think it adds a lot to have some more improvements, both visually, strategically and player-engagement wise.

I don't think we need *more* stuff, but I think we should keep the improvements we have and try to make them useful.

I don't think we need *more* stuff, but I think we should keep the improvements we have and try to make them useful.

If we consider mine and cottage as fixed, then we ""only"" need to define

a. Turbine, with three levels and/or techs, which is an interesting tradeoff against mine on mesa.

b. Solar farm, with three levels and/or techs, which is an interesting tradeoff against cottage on rock/sink.

There are no other combinations, right?

May be some minor defencive improvements or refineries.

Lets say Refinery improvement, 1 hammer +1 cash, adds more cash with few techs, adds +1 commerce per 2 spice tile withing 1 square radius? (Make sence in form of passive spice gathering) (Just idea, we can adjust bonus) and requries Arrakis Future civic to build?

Special only on salt late improvement (aka lumbermill), Salt Refinery - gives hammers and commerce.

Tradepost - Gives commerce on cross - adjacent tiles +1 and own tile (5 tiles total), gives defencive bonuses and slight culture boost (1 cpt)

Lets try thinking not-vanilla mechanics. Some new mechanic might be much more fitting and interesting.

Well, we might need to *un*fix the mine in order to make things work. And remember that there is an implicit comparison to running specialists. Make worked tiles too good and specialists aren't worth it. Make worked tiles too poor and tile working isn't worth it.

And unless you want to remove turbine from flat as well as from sink, then you're missing some.

Turbine vs mine on mesa needs to be interesting.
Turbine vs solar farm on flat (rock/rugged) needs to be interesting.
Turbine vs cottage on flat needs to be interesting.
Solar farm vs cottage on flat/sink needs to be interesting.

But otherwise yeah.

And as variables to play with we have:
Hammer and commerce yields.
Water yield (but -ve water yield is problematic for the AI, so should maybe be ignored)
Build time (but build time is ignored by the AI when choosing improvements)
Tech access.
Upgradability; by tech or by built version.

Ok i gave alot of though today on this topic.

So far i got some good (i think they are, sure with some adjustments,) additions, which will get mod closer both to canon Dune feel and add some cool features from Westwood games, which can make territorial improvements game very interesting.

1. As proposed, Spice Refinery Improvement. Which aviable at spice industry, and provides +1 gold per adjacent spice tile. It add great mechanics, when you can place it well, and benefit (alittle) from all those spice tiles which are not fall into bfc, by working this land tile. Probably cant be built with Arrakis Paradise civic, And gain +1 commerce bonus with Spice future. It also make alot of sence canon wise and westwood wise - close placed refinery will improve commerce and will improve spice operations.

----------------------------------------
2. Completely new mechanics.
Involving few units and few improvements.

a. Do you remeber those consdtruction units from Westwood series, which can build base? For me, in late dune such mobile construction platforms make alot of sense. So, late in game MCV unit , which should be built in hammers, and builds special improvements. It being consumed by building those special improvements.
b. Improvements, which are aviable late-mid/late in game, are iusing Demagog Mechanics from FFH. If being worked, improvement grow, and when it grow enough of turns, it spawn some kind of unit, and improvement resets.

but unit type depends on improvement, but wait read forth , not normal unit.....

note: all thoise improvements hsould have special classs, like "advanced improvement". Distance should be limited to 3 minimum distance between different special improvements. That mean you can just spam them.

a1. Assembly Center. Grows # turns whine being worked. provde +3 hammers, can be built by MCV only, MCV consumed by construstion. When grown , it spawn "supply truck" unit (not big one) (aka soldier of killmorph in ffh), which can hurry some part of production. Yeild wise it should be same as same era mines/solar farms, but it allow you to xfer production. (haha you can load those in tranposts and send suplies on war front cities which are on other continent or just collect production, which can be used lately)
When grown, its resets its growth (using demagog mechanics)

a2. Trading post. +2 commerce, +1 culture. When grown , spawns Trader (simple) which just can go and generate some cash with your OB neighbour. (neet to check and ballance yield)

a3. Training Camp . Spawns current era melee unit. (Intersing use for warmongers and some bad tile cities.) (make alot of sence from canon Dune too), improved rate of unit production in comparison to city that have not +% military uniot production bonus.

a4. Planet Study Center. +1 hammer +1 commerce, spawns Probes. (Some truck perhaps), Institutes that study planet on land. dune is mistyreous planet and there is much to learn.

round up.
All of those tiles built by mcv, and reset when grow, spawning unit. Tehy are limited to build (3 tiles minimum distance between any MCV improvements), and have very interesting variations of use. Sure , some civics should influence them , via +% certain improvement growth speed.
Player wise it will add alot of interesting options, like hurrying production in weak cities, or extra warmongering, and with civics it will add alot of options and synergies to use.
AI wise it wont be hard. Need to calculate average yeild by dividing boost result / truns need to grow, but certain civics lovers AIs will find those very nice and usefull, more than that, they will look as more flavour-full-following AIs.

Sure , the thing 2 is raw and need to be balanced, but it can be good. We are not lazy, aren't we. Some of such, even modified alot from what i proposed, mechanics will add alot of fun and variety to improvement game.

Just some comments. I appreciate that you're trying to be creative and brainstorm, and these may sound harsh, but we get the best mod by thinking hard about proposals. Testing to destruction - a very Dune concept.

As proposed, Spice Refinery Improvement.

We already have a Refinery as a building. My feeling was that in-desert refining/handlnig was already represented by the harvester improvement.
However, we could have a refinery building in the city that gave extra bonuses for harvester improvements in the BFC.
Planetfall had a building like that, that gave a bonus (free specialist?) for each robotic mine in its BFC.

provides +1 gold per adjacent spice tile
This seems weaker than a cottage - you will hardly ever have a tile adjacent to more than 2 spice tiles.
Also, more things where you have to contantly have to run around rebuilding improvements because of spice blows/evaporation? Doesn't seem that much fun. Unless you're intending for this to be built on deserts?
Also seems like a lot of work to code (sdk mod required); there aren't any buildings now whose yield depnds on the presence of things in adjacent tiles.

Do you remeber those consdtruction units from Westwood series, which can build base? For me, in late dune such mobile construction platforms make alot of sense. So, late in game MCV unit

An MCV seems very un-Duneish to me. That kind of thing was built for the computer games for standard C&C gameplay mechanics, but nothing like that appears at all in the books. Maniac tried something like this in Planetfall with a supply crawler building robotic mines, but then later removed it I think.

b. Improvements, which are aviable late-mid/late in game, are iusing Demagog Mechanics from FFH. If being worked, improvement grow, and when it grow enough of turns, it spawn some kind of unit, and improvement resets.
The AI allocates tile work (and improvement construction) based only on resource yields. So, if this improvement gives as good yields as other resources, then it will be too powerful, because it also gives free units. If it doesn't, then it will never be built or worked.
Also, why should terrain improvements be given workers; some kind of militia being levied?

a2. Trading post. +2 commerce, +1 culture. When grown , spawns Trader (simple) which just can go and generate some cash with your OB neighbour. (neet to check and ballance yield)
Trading posts in the suburbs of your own city? Feels weird.
Also, improvements can't generate culture.

a3. Training Camp . Spawns current era melee unit. (Intersing use for warmongers and some bad tile cities.) (make alot of sence from canon Dune too),
Units should be trained in cities, not by improvements. Thats how the civ engine works; the AI knows how to build units in cities, not by working tiles.
If it has a low yile yield, the AI will never build it, if it has a high tile yield, then it is too strong.

improved rate of unit production in comparison to city that have not +% military uniot production bonus.
I don't understand this.

Planet Study Center. +1 hammer +1 commerce, spawns Probes.
What is a probe?
None of the factions in Dune other than the Fremen and maybe Atreides have any interest in studying Dune either. Elrood sends Kynes to Arrakis and then just ignores him, and Shaddam ignores his son.

Ok , few comments :
MCV can be engeneering squad.
Puprose for post is brainstorm yes.
Improvements can generate Culture - check FF+ for FFH.
AI can be programmed to count those improvements as sommething different, by using formula. (benefit_unit_value/turns_to generate), and sure, it can be programmed.
All numbers given is hightly experiemental (can be changed, like +2 gp per spice tile, and thats for brainstorm, really.
As well, names are random. We can call it Harvesting Operation Control Center.
Its just about abstract ideas of new uses of game mechanics. Names and numbers not matter, direction of thinking is. MCV can be Engeneering Squad , +1 can be +2, codding can be added, just need to look on new directions, because old ones are abused. What is good within FFH is that it was 1st using alot of new mechanics, or un-distinguishable modifications of vanilla ones.

Is reprogramming the AI for selecting which improvements to work really something we get into?

I don't see what we gain from shifting unit construction from hammers in cities into improvements being worked, except confusion.

Is reprogramming the AI for selecting which improvements to work really something we get into?

I don't see what we gain from shifting unit construction from hammers in cities into improvements being worked, except confusion.

Sure you have a point. But ok, lets say we can master this technique on good yeld tile. Normal tile which can be upgraded by Engeneering squad. Impove yild and generate unit for much longer time to compensate yeild, but it might be interesting. sure, there are also easier ways. (for example) +4h+1c tile, which also grows units though long time.
Also i dont think that prioritising working on such improvements is hard to code (in case its same yield tiles, 1 with improvement, 1 without)
Also it can be just tier 4-5 mines-whatsoever.
Just idea with groiwing usefull units.
Btw unit that can stock hammers (aka soldier of killmorph, the supply truck , whatever) is very nice and fits dune imo.