It's about time spice got it's own thread. The current set up:

1. Spice appears only on Desert Waste/Deep Desert tiles.
2. Spice appears randomly on the map triggered by a spice blow mechanic.
3. Spice tiles are worked by Spice Harvester improvements.
4. Spice harvesters can only be built within you cultural borders.
5. Every civ has a House Spice corporation. This Corporation only has a Headquarters building and cannot be spread to other cities. The Corporation generates 3 additional commerce per spice tile with a Harvester improvement.
6. Spice disappears over time, this will happen more quickly when a Harvester is in place and more slowly is running the Arrakis Spice civic.
7. Spice will not appear on tiles with (or adjacent to) fresh water access in the current design.
8. The Landsraad religion shrine, CHOAM Headquarters, founds the CHOAM corporation which functions as second House Spice corporation for your faction.

Planned/Proposed Changes
1. We've talked about adding a building that gives say +0.15 gold per spice resource. Maybe this could be a Spice Economy unique building.
2. Wonders that give increasing benefits the more spice you control such as Prescience Chamber and Guild Research Facility.

Here are two of the big issues that have been raised about the current implementation.

Issue 1 - Various people have commented that spice is not important enough in the mod

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.

On a related note, the Arrakis Spice civic. It gives +1 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 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

As things stand it is possible to have a thriving economy while harvesting little or no spice which feels wrong.

Options

1) Reduce the amount of commerce available from sources other than the spice. For example, reduce commerce available from cottages and specialists.
2) Increase tech costs, etc and increase commerce from spice so that spice commerce accounts for a larger percentage.
3) Create buildings and wonders that provide varied beneficial effects dependent on the amount of spice tiles improved. See this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=336948).

Issue 2 - It is not possible to harvest spice more than a short distance from land tiles

This is because spice harvesters must be built within you cultural border. To harvest the spice you need to extend your cultural border over desert tiles. This means that maps have to have a fair number of islands for spice harvesting in any quantity to happen.

Options

1) Keep the status quo meaning that spice and spice harvesting will not be a significant factor in more Pangaea style maps such as the current Arrakis.py.

2) Change Arrakis.py.

Spice works pretty well on a Duneipegalo mapscript, so its easy to interpret this as a mapscript issue at least as much as a mechanic issue. Also, as my draft Arrakis scenario map shows, the real Arrakis from the books is not just big continents; it has plenty of narrow land-necks which will provide significant spice to most players, only in the big northern basins will there not be any significant spice access.

2) Allow spice harvesters to expand cultural borders using JCultureControl or a similar mechanism to Starbases in Final Frontier (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8504345&postcount=443). I tried some simple experiments with this - see here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8500734&postcount=437) and here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8501008&postcount=438).

A summary of the drawbacks of this approach:

I still have many concerns. For example, I worry that:
a) the culture will stay there even once the harvester disappears, which will look and feel weird
b) the AI will not defend its spice tiles, or attack yours. It would be easy for a human to start a war and pillage off all their harvesters with only a handful of thopters (removing their culture) and then building your own
c) it will be exploitable by the human; the human player can build a huge worker army and go around the whole map getting all the spice, leading to a truly massive economy. The AI won't understand that a huge worker army would be valuable, and so won't build one.
d) it will be very hard to balance the spice income. Either you will be able to run too big an economy with all the spice, or you won't be able to run a big enough one without it.
e) it would allow an arrakis paradise user to still generate a huge spice income. Arrakis paradise penalizes spice income by providing big areas around cities where spice can't spawn, but if you're free to mine all the spice in the deep desert away from your cities then this isn't much of a penalty.

I responded to these issues in this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8502231&postcount=440). On issue (a) is seems like the removal of culture when improvements are removed is built into JCultureControl.

I know this isn't a comprehensive list of the issues or possible options, but it is just to get the discussion going. I can come back and update this post as further stuff is raised.

Some things to add:
i) Spice will not appear on tiles with (or adjacent to) fresh water access in the current design.
ii) Landsraad/CHOAM religion shrine is intended to be another spice corp building.
iii) We've talked about adding a building that gives say +0.15 gold per spice resource. Maybe this could be a Spice Economy unique building.
iv) Currently you get very different amounts of spice on the Duneipegalo vs Arrakis mapscripts.
Spice works pretty well on a Duneipegalo mapscript, so its easy to interpret this as a mapscript issue at least as much as a mechanic issue.
Also, as my draft Arrakis scenario map shows, the real Arrakis from the books is not just big continents; it has plenty of narrow land-necks which will provide significant spice to most players, only in the big northern basins will there not be any significant spice access.

So "change the Arrakis mapscript" needs to be one of the possible options.

On Duneipegalo script, spice income can already provide ~1/5 of your commerce or more quite easily (eg: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=229105&d=1253989616 ), and more than 1/5 of your gold/research output because it is all concentrated in your capital, which will have the most gold/beaker boosting buildings.
(Eg for same economy as above: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=229255&d=1254102207 Capital provides nearly half economy-wide beaker output, and most of that comes from spice commerce)

On Duneipegalo script, spice income can already provide ~1/5 of your commerce or more quite easily, and more than 1/5 of your gold/research output because it is all concentrated in your capital, which will have the most gold/beaker boosting buildings.

Is a fifth enough to be considered 'important' though? Not sure.

Is a fifth enough to be considered 'important' though? Not sure.

It can end up providing nearly 1/3 of your gold and beaker output because you have every booster built in your capital.

Which means that it is 50% of the size of the entire rest of your economy. (1/3)/(2/3)

So yes, I think thats plenty. (See screenshots in post 2).

Also note, that means that if Arrakis paradise reduces your spice income by half relative to Spice economy, then Arrakis paradise terraforming must increase the output of the rest of your economy by 25% in order to stay balanced.
Which is a pretty big ask.

* * *
Also note some edits in post2, and some more concerns with harvesting outside normal cultural borders:

And I don't think it will be fun for the human player to being having to control and contest areas outside their cultural borders. The limited line of sight will be frustrating (AI doesn't suffer from this), and the long supply lines and distance won't be fun either. The combat would be boring, since there is little variety in the deep desert units (just a suspensor gunship line and the thopter line), and since the AI is bad at using aircraft carriers. Plus, Fremen would have a huge advantage since they can bring their normal soldiers out onto the desert, while everyone else can only use suspensors and thopters.

Checking in for a very actual discussion. As of now, Spice is way too unimportant.

As I said in the 1.6 feedback thread:
Also, the Spice Firm produces 5g to compensate for its maintenance as coorp. However, if you have 0 spice (but have the corp), it has no maintenance and you will earn the 5g because the corp will be passive. This makes rush for a single spice source for the coorp and then ignoring spice (living inland this is often sound) can be viable (since you would need to keep a constant supply of something like 4-5 spice just to get the same yield out of it as you get from the building if you have no coorp maintenance).

This is actually an incentive against collecting Spice until you're fairly large. When you're fairly large, why spend time on spice when you can go on a conquering spree?

Basically, Spice opportunity costs are way off. It needs to be extremely valuable. In the description it says that prices have once reached 720.000 solaris the decagram, but in reality the commerce you get from one source of spice (which, I hope, is more than one decagram per year/turn) is what you get out of taxes from a basin hamlet. If that's just half of 720.000 solaris, the planet is wicked-rich.

I think it would make sense to double the commerce bonus from the Spice coorporation, and implement buildings for other cities that generate minor income from Spice aswell.

Also , i remind, there was talk about boosting Arrakis Spice civic at all in comparison to Paradise. Perhaps something involved with guild .....

Atm as civic it provide much less change and options and features than Paradise.

Spice is quite powerfull atm, and kinda balanced, nbut yes it should provide more, it will feell more right. Perhaps it will also balance Spice and Paradise Civics, and will make Terraforming victory harder to achieve.

I think that is especially true because civs like the Fremen react with negative diplomatic relations because you pick that civic (I guess that this works the other way around aswell, though?).

Its current effect is far too weak; you almost never work Spice tiles.

I think that is especially true because civs like the Fremen react with negative diplomatic relations because you pick that civic (I guess that this works the other way around aswell, though?).

Its current effect is far too weak; you almost never work Spice tiles.

No, you not right, sorry. I working plently of tiles and alot , adn that doubles and feed my economy. And i played alot of games and i am kicking this game at deity tiny map and now struggling with small. Spice makes sagnificant boost, but perhaps it should be more. Just because Paradise adopters have own great boosts and Terraforming is easiest and fastest victory in game.
Yep perhaps it should be revieved and rebalanced, i am sure, compared to Paradise espesially, but if used well you can get very hight amounts of income via spice.

This is actually an incentive against collecting Spice until you're fairly large.

No there isn't.

When you're fairly large, why spend time on spice when you can go on a conquering spree?
What is stopping you from doing both?

Basically, Spice opportunity costs are way off.
What opportunity costs? The only opportunity costs to spice are other things that workers could be doing. And these are pretty low value compared to collecting spice.

in the description it says that prices have once reached 720.000 solaris the decagram, but in reality the commerce you get from one source of spice (which, I hope, is more than one decagram per year/turn) is what you get out of taxes from a basin hamlet.


This isn't really a useful comparison.
Gameplay > fluff. Besides, who knows how many people a town improvement represents. 10,000, maybe? Is it really so unreasonable that the GDP of 10,000 people is more than the NET income from a single harvester operation?

There is a limit to how much income should be coming just from improvements that you don't even have work the tile to receive income from.

I completely agree with these though:
1. Landsraad/CHOAM religion shrine is intended to be another spice corp building.
2. We've talked about adding a building that gives say +0.15 gold per spice resource. Maybe this could be a Spice Economy unique building.

The one thing that *is* weird is that spice resource tiles used to be considerably more valuable to actually work, within city BFC. Now they only seem to be giving 4 commerce?? They used to give like 7.
Can we check on this in the game files?

Ah yes there is something changed with bfc worked tile bonus. I remeber it was 8 with fin, yep.

The one thing that *is* weird is that spice resource tiles used to be considerably more valuable to actually work, within city BFC. Now they only seem to be giving 4 commerce?? They used to give like 7.
Can we check on this in the game files?

There has been no change in spice yield since 1.4.2 or so. Polar waste commerce yield was decreased by one in 1.5.2 or so. There was a long debate about this, but from my standpoint, polar cities are too powerful.

I know you have said this, but I am 100% certain that spice (with harvester) only gives +4 commerce currently (see attached screenshot, 1h1c base for desert waste, +1h from arrakis spice civic, +4 hammers for spice resource w/ harvester), and that it used to give more, once upon a time at least. It has been at +4 for a while, but this is not enough IMO.

I would suggest that spice give +1c by itself, and that the harvester give +5c when on a spice resource. So the highest possible yield = desert waste w/ weather scanner and arrakis spice civic and spice resource and harvester improvement = 3h/7c.

This is nothing to do with polar desert waste, we can discuss that a separate time.

I would suggest that spice give +1c by itself, and that the harvester give +5c when on a spice resource.

I am a little confused. You have commented in the past that when all the +% buildings are built, the commerce rate is too high. Would you be willing to try this out locally and see if it makes the game too easy? The harvester yield is in terrain/civ4improvementinfos.xml. The spice bonus yield is in terrain/civ4bonusinfos.xml.

I can test this at some point, sure. I doubt it will make much difference to overall economy rate; the number of spice tiles normally worked in the BFC of cities is very small.

So the main reason for this change is for a small *real* change in commerce from a spice economy, but a large "feel" in how important spice is.

Also, to help differentiate arrakis spice from arrakis paradise (who cannot work spice tiles in BFC because of fresh water).

Holy one,

first of all:
Congrats!! This is such a great mod!! You have implemented so many great ideas and the "dune-feeling" is veeery present. :mischief: :D :goodjob:

But I also know (like you do ;-)), that work is not finished, yet... especially AI-programming seems needed... the hardest work, I suppose.

In my games (just two yet, until about turn 100 difficulty noble and prince), the AI doesn't harvest any spice. I followed this already in the "diplomacy mode", where no other player was able to give me a "spice-ressource". First I thought, that you don't want to show the opponent harvest to the player... but now, that I can cross Irulans borders I see, that she doesn't harvest the giant blow in front of her door:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=233108&stc=1&d=1257110667

I don't know, if this problem only occurs in my games... or if I have to wait more turns, until AI harvests (but why?! other fields have been upgraded, too)
Might it be, that spice is located in "water"-fields and CIV assumes, that Workers cannot walk through water?! Maybe CIV doesn't get it, that a tech improves a units marching options?!

If that's the problem, my suggestion is, to try it with the "fishing-boats/whale-ships"! Might it be possible, that they could "harvest spice" and solve the problem about it? This would also give the option, that the harvesters become mobile units (fishing-boat kind).

It might also be possible, that you can "recycle" your harvester that way: as soon as the spice has depleted, the harvester becomes a "fishing-boat" again. This might be harder to implement.

Although I already read many many posts here in this forum, I haven't read ALL, maybe this already has been discussed somewhere and dropped by some reason... if it really was, I'm sorry for stealing your time.

Don't get me wrong: This mod is sooo great, so many story-related things have been implemented and most things fit! I wonder, how much time you all spent for it... the more it makes it worthier to work on! I've also seen many changes between version 1.6.1 and 1.6.3, so I know, you are working very hard :-)

Thanks team ;-)
yours Hived!

P.S.: I also attached my savegame... just in case, that only I have this problem.

Hello and nice to see You here. :)
In my games AI always before me to harvest spice.... Dunno really what to say to you... :) *shrug*

(They are so spice greedy that they build outposts to get it.

I checked your worldbuilder - Well, because you playing on easy level, ais dont get free units and workers, so they start slower but then will develop rapidly.
In DW difficulty raises by different curve, and those starting improvements are very different, and veeeeeeery important in DW. If you play on Monarch You'll see.
There is different economic system (alot of hammers and very few food, much more commerce) and different abit combat system from BTS.

Also ai tent to improve food/production first, so while it have imrovable mesas/resources he will improve them (they provide both resources and water/commerce/production).
And on easy levels there is a limitation - workers, and abundance of resource tiles in culture borders of Rexing AI civs. (which have more cities and culture than You.) AI just grab more land, and by this increasing potential improvable water yield tiles, and then prioritizes them. But soon enou7gh when they have enough workers and tiles improved they will focus on spice (having twice more improved bfc cities than You)

My adivises - wait abit or just start game on Monarch difficulty :)
And be carefull - The fact that AI not harvesting spice does not mean he isnt fighting for it. He is busy to capture more tiles of it while you focused on harvesting of already aquired one.

Also, be carefull with such defences. Rapid eco growth does not mean win in DW if you have tiny land/weak military. Some ais love to make nastry surprises by unloading huge stacks 1 tile near your capital by swift suspensor fleet attack. Dont neglect defence, Harkonnen buddy may be not harvesting spice because he want someone to harvest for him :P (check his land you scouting now with your thopter. and count military units. those units can arrive to you by suspensors in 6 turns (and they will) ).

In my games (just two yet, until about turn 100 difficulty noble and prince), the AI doesn't harvest any spice

In my games the AI normally harvests spice without any problems. My guess is that particular AI player had not yet researched the spice harvesting tech that allows the spice harvester improvement to be built. The AI is pretty slow to tech (and build improvements) at Noble difficulty. Maybe I need to increase the Gold flavor value on that tech a little, to make the AI like it more, if this turns out to be a common issue.

you could treat spice like a strategic resource that is automatically connected to all of your cities, that gives gold, happiness, and health (if that's possible)

Thanks all for answering my obviously wrong guess.

Hello and nice to see You here. :)
In my games AI always before me to harvest spice.... Dunno really what to say to you... :) *shrug*

(They are so spice greedy that they build outposts to get it.
Wow, great to hear that. I had expected, that AI doesn't get the hack, what the outposts are good for, in this Mod... but hearing, that they even use them regularly, makes me even more addicted to this Mod :crazyeye:

I checked your worldbuilder - Well, because you playing on easy level, ais dont get free units and workers, so they start slower but then will develop rapidly.
In DW difficulty raises by different curve, and those starting improvements are very different, and veeeeeeery important in DW. If you play on Monarch You'll see.
Thanks for checking my file. Maybe you're right, I should simply start a game on a higher difficulty level (maybe even emperor or deity), just to look, how AI develops there. I was just unsure as I have NEVER seen spice as tradeable good in the opponents diplomatic screen, but “many” other ressources.


And be carefull - The fact that AI not harvesting spice does not mean he isnt fighting for it. He is busy to capture more tiles of it while you focused on harvesting of already aquired one.
Yeah, that's because I know, that spice is a “depleting” ressource...

...btw. it also deplets, when not harvested, doesn't it?!

I only harvest spice, as long as no other tile gives me at least ressources of the same value... of course this “value” depends on my “feeling”. In some cases 7c is worthier than 1w+1h (I'd say in most)... in others not. To realize, when to choose the one and when the other, is one of the differences between “medium” and “good” players ;-)
Also the horrifying status of health made me choose this “golden path”, as I tried to get health-boosting techs as fast as possible. On the other hand, I wanted to be one of the first players with education, so I could enjoy the advantage of first tech(-cross-)trading (which is on low difficulties still possible). Maybe the “health-challenge” could be better solved by early settling... but that's also something more experienced players can judge better.

Also, be carefull with such defences. Rapid eco growth does not mean win in DW if you have tiny land/weak military. Some ais love to make nastry surprises by unloading huge stacks 1 tile near your capital by swift suspensor fleet attack. Dont neglect defence, Harkonnen buddy may be not harvesting spice because he want someone to harvest for him :P (check his land you scouting now with your thopter. and count military units. those units can arrive to you by suspensors in 6 turns (and they will) ).
Huh... don't make me shiver :D afaik the Harkonnen have no suspensor techs yet... of course this does not excuse the “low militarization” of my tiny land. I just wanted to wait for better units to build. Also “high-tech-unit”-attacks were planned (should express my aggressive stance), so that expansion not only comes by settling... I felt really safe being “beyond” the impassible desert and thanks to education, I know most of the techs they don't have yet. but I have to agree: My “pair” of cities is not something, you could call “empire”. :blush:
You see, it has been a while, since I had my last civ-game. :mischief:

In my games the AI normally harvests spice without any problems. My guess is that particular AI player had not yet researched the spice harvesting tech that allows the spice harvester improvement to be built. The AI is pretty slow to tech (and build improvements) at Noble difficulty. Maybe I need to increase the Gold flavor value on that tech a little, to make the AI like it more, if this turns out to be a common issue.
(Almost?) all of them have the tech. The Harkonnen sit “centered”, they have no “coastal cities”, so it's logical, they have no spice (if only the baron knew what Feyd is doing there!! Gimmie my ssspice!!!)...
I think it's not a tech problem, but I guess, they improve (all) the other tiles first, such as Slvynn said :-/
you could treat spice like a strategic resource that is automatically connected to all of your cities, that gives gold, happiness, and health (if that's possible)
I like this idea! As it not only (hopefully) makes the AI improve spice first and maybe settle a bit more spice-orientated, but also fits to the story:
health: spice extends life
happiness: At least the addicted (and who is not on dune? Look in their eyes ;-) ) will thank you, but also the traders. C'mon spice is the most wanted substance in universe! I'd be happy to have some. It's better than gold in our world ;-)

giving gold in every city is not needed imo and also harder to implement (?!). You already get gold by spice-coorp. and working on the spice tile.
Also it would force you to expand even more rapidly, because when having enough spice each city doesn't longer cost gold, but in addition rewards you with more gold. Not to say, that each city also gives you the option of more spice to harvest: a vicious circle.


I've also read somewhere of the idea of cutting the commerce-outputs of other tiles/improvements, so you are forced to harvest spice in order to get gold and beakers. Maybe this also lets the AI improve spice-tiles earlier.
I'd give it a try!

...btw. it also deplets, when not harvested, doesn't it?!

Yes, the spice is on the surface of the desert. If you don't harvest it, it will eventually be covered by sandstorms.

It depletes faster when it has a harvester on it though.

but I guess, they improve (all) the other tiles first, such as Slvynn said
Then they probably don't have enough workers. low difficulty level....

you could treat spice like a strategic resource that is automatically connected to all of your cities, that gives gold, happiness, and health (if that's possible)

That would break the game I think, making all other resources unimportant. And why should spice be giving happiness or health??!? Ordinary citizen/workers can't afford to buy significant quantities of spice. Only the incredibly wealthy can become addicted. Most of the population never gets more than trace amounts, they aren't longer living or easier to keep in line because of it. The spice all gets exported, not used for local consumption.

Then they probably don't have enough workers. low difficulty level....
hmmm... similar problem, when starting a "deity-game", so it's not (only) difficulty:
Just wanted to look, how AI develops and "waited" 100 turns. Then I opened the WB, to have a closer look.


Summary:

- Two AI spice-firms were founded. One of them in turn 88. (so i suppose, the other players haven't harvested yet)

- The two "founders" were on the last two ranks (excluding my "humble" faction)... they simply had not enough space to expand, what means enough "other tiles" to develop first.

- Everyone had the necessary techs to harvest (they were quite advanced at all: Lansraad was founded in 13191AD)

- Alia, who was spied during the game by my scouts developed nearly all other tiles (built several cottages, mines and stuff), just ignoring the spice lying in front of her "house". That means, she developed also "non-ressource-tiles" before going for spice!

- in turn 100 there were overall five(!) tiles harvested on the whole map. All by the Harkonnen (the only guy with only four cities). He also has developed every other tile in his borders... making a sum of 21 developed tiles for a population of 6 :cringe:

Don't know if it makes a difference, when starting a game on "monarch", but I won't give it a try until the next patch... sorry :(

That would break the game I think, making all other resources unimportant. And why should spice be giving happiness or health??!? Ordinary citizen/workers can't afford to buy significant quantities of spice. Only the incredibly wealthy can become addicted. Most of the population never gets more than trace amounts, they aren't longer living or easier to keep in line because of it. The spice all gets exported, not used for local consumption.
I don't think it will be a „game-breaker“. Strategic ressource doesn't mean, that you loose the game, when not having it. Other ressources give health or happiness bonuses, too. Have you ever lost a vanilla game, because you had no gold and no rice?! I don't think so.
Maybe we understand fusetechs suggestion in different ways and that's the problem. IMO it should be read: As soon as you have one spice, all cities gain +1health +1 happy (just like gold AND rice in vanilla). More spice doesn't expand that bonus, so you do NOT get +2,+2 having 2 spice and so on... in that case, it would defenitly be much too strong and a „game-breaker“!

Strategic ressource also doesn't mean to me, that it is needed to construct units (although I think, that's the regular term). I think, you can also declare ressources as „strategic“ without creating units, that require it. If not, it would be possible to add a non-essential bonus unit (such as war elephants via ebony in vanilla... maybe with even more prerequisites, such as religion: Jihad+spice=Fanatics or something).

The only reason for declaring it as „strategic“ should be imo, that the AI develops it earlier and maybe settles more „coastal“ (hopefully...).

...and story-relation:
do you remember the Fremen-spice-orgies?! I don't think, that inhabitants ON Dune had no access to spice. Remember Paul saying "It's in everything here"?! (don't know the exact words, as I saw the film in German) ...and even the inhabitants of a Harkonnen city might be "happy", that they won't be slapped to death, when bringing their spice.

All-in-all, spice is still too useless to AI-players IMO... somehow it must be "upgraded" maybe by giving it even more commerce-output when being worked by citizens, but giving "only" +2 for the spice-firm. I can even think of upgrading the c-output without cutting the spice-firm... or by increasing the hammer output. Most other ressources (esp. the non-water-ress) give also a bonus of 6 or 7, when upgraded, but they also provide you happieness or health. Yes, I know, +3c of the firm, but for other ressources there is no "danger" of disappearance.

How do other players think about that?

So far... hope you don't feel bothered... this mod is way tooo good, that it cannot founder on stupid AI-behavior... that's just my opinion. :cool:

Greetz, Hived!

All-in-all, spice is still too useless to AI-players IMO... somehow it must be "upgraded" maybe by giving it even more commerce-output when being worked by citizens, but giving "only" +2 for the spice-firm.

Thanks for the input. We are trying to balance two different things, with one hand tied behind our back. (Sounds painful.) On the one hand, we want a good human player to get a lot of benefit from spice, but not too much. If we increase the yield of spice much more, then the amount of commerce and beakers will be too high and the human player will progress too rapidly. On the other hand, we recognize that the AI may make bad choices about which plots to develop first. So there is a gap between what the AI can do, and what the human player can do.

The problem is that the AI for workers is very hard to understand and modify. We would like to somehow make the AI prioritize spice harvesters more, without making it too easy for the human player. I hope that we can learn more about the AI and modify it, but that is very slow going.

Is it possible to add other player-wide effects depending on the amount of spice you harvest at a given time (possibly scaling with map size)?

Such effects could model that *you*, the player, and the high-ranking staff ingest the spice and gain benefits from that.

For example, the prophetic effects of spice could increase the vision radius of your cities - for each 4 spice resources you control, the vision radius increases by one tile. This can be a huge strategic benefit, allowing you to anticipate attacks way earlier.

Similarly, it could add an effect to the culture rate, perhaps include buildings that produce extra culture per spice (like +1 culture/3 spice), this would go along the same direction and represent the political influence of the spice.

Finally, it might be interest to have an UN-like council, but one that's counting your spice instead of your population - representing your interstellar influence instead your influence on Arrakis. Such a council could have effects on the homeworld screen costs and unit availability and give the whole thing a very "epic" feel that drives home that Dune isn't just about the planet but also about interstellar political intrigue - where Spice is power.

Cheers, LT.

Hi there, LT.

I've posted some ideas for buildings that offer scalable benefits from the spice here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=336948). I'm patiently waiting for the idea to be implemented. Perhaps I should post in SDK requests since david has lots to do.

Thanks for the input. We are trying to balance two different things, with one hand tied behind our back. (Sounds painful.) On the one hand, we want a good human player to get a lot of benefit from spice, but not too much. If we increase the yield of spice much more, then the amount of commerce and beakers will be too high and the human player will progress too rapidly.
I agree to that... that's why maybe an increase in hammers might be a better choice... or no increase at all
On the other hand, we recognize that the AI may make bad choices about which plots to develop first. So there is a gap between what the AI can do, and what the human player can do.
Yes, so my first objective as programmer would be, to get the AI to harvest earlier. I think it's okay, if they improve other ress. first... also wind-traps are okay (or better: wished), human player develops them first, too... but seeing, what Alia or the Baron were doing, really hurts... and destroys much of the so well built up dune-feeling (just my opinion).
The problem is that the AI for workers is very hard to understand and modify. We would like to somehow make the AI prioritize spice harvesters more, without making it too easy for the human player. I hope that we can learn more about the AI and modify it, but that is very slow going.
Yes, I understand the problem... I can also imagine, that manipulating the workers "brain" is more difficult then changing the things he develops.
What about the "strategic-ressource" idea? Is there an option to declare ressources as "strategic" (if possible without attaching units to it)? And if, will it change AI behavior?
If that works, it would be a fine method of changing "nothing" to human players but changing AI worker behavior... so dune wars will finally be the battle for spice, everybody expects :) :D

Hope I don't bother you, I just try to improve your mod ;)

Greetz, Hived!

P.S.: I really love this Mod and as I know, that there are still things to improve, I just wait, how it develops :D

Hived, again thanks very much for the feedback.

in turn 100 there were overall five(!) tiles harvested on the whole map

The AI always builds harvesters in my games, though I don't know how much by turn 100.
Maybe you're just expecting too much too soon.

I think there is no reason for spice to be important in the early game. In a logical sense, in the early game there isn't even any offword trade, so spice is not very valuable.

I don't think it will be a „game-breaker

Here is why it would break the game (if each spice gives a bonus). Health and happiness are very binary in nature; they only have any impact when you have less than some threshold. So your aim is not a maximizing function, but a satisficing function. That is, you need just enough so that the constraints are not binding.

If you can get all the health and happy you need from spice alone, then every other resource in the game basically just became unimportant. Which makes the game incredibly boring, and breaks the balance between resources.

More spice doesn't expand that bonus
If you're just addnig a happy/health bonus to a single spice resource, that is even worse; it is trivially easy for every faction to get a single spice resource. So all you're really doing is making a global increase in health and happiness, and maknig the game easier, and making happiness and healthiness less important as mechanics. And you aren't even adding any marginal incentive to seek out additional spice tiles - which I thought was your whole point.

do you remember the Fremen-spice-orgies
Fremen are different than ordinary populations, and do have significant spice in their food and diet, but still not enough to significantly increase their lives, or to addict them.
And the orgies come from the transformed water of life, not from spice consumption.

All-in-all, spice is still too useless to AI-players IMO

The best way to improve spice is to provide more buildings that have cumulative bonuses depending on the total empire-wide number of spice resources you have, not to slap a bunch of bonuses onto just having a single resource.

it must be "upgraded" maybe by giving it even more commerce-output when being worked by citizens
I have no problem with this. Its now down to ~+4 commerce. I'd like to see it move back up to 6, with spice industry tech (ie not in the early game).
The one thing we do want to avoid is big early game commerce differences across factions based on the very very random distribution of spice in the early game.

Yes, so my first objective as programmer would be, to get the AI to harvest earlier
I don't see this as a priority.

Another point to make; it is not necessarily good for the AI to try to change their AI to make them prioritize spice in the early game. They arguably get much better economy bonuses from building windtraps, wells, dew collectors, cottages and mines than they do from building harvesters in the early game.

Hived, again thanks very much for the feedback.
You're welcome. As long as I can help you, I am happy :)
Also thank YOU for your patience and fast reaction to a „noobs“ idea.
The AI always builds harvesters in my games, though I don't know how much by turn 100.
Maybe you're just expecting too much too soon.
I'am definitely an „early-player“. In vanilla I often cancel a game soon after I know who will probably win it... so „modern-tech-games“ are not typical for me. That might be a part of the problem I have. But I also think we have different demands on this game. When I think of Dune, I think automatically of spiceharvest, harvest-sabotaging Harkonnen, guerilla-Fremen blowing up Harkonnen harvesters... or smuggling spice to the guild. IMO a game called „dune-wars“ should be themed on battle for spice, such as the dune-game-series from Westwood or the boardgame of 1979 or the film with Sting.

I think there is no reason for spice to be important in the early game. In a logical sense, in the early game there isn't even any offword trade, so spice is not very valuable.
For most of the factions (imo all but fremen) the contact to „outer space“ is most vital: They have to sell spice, to get solaris and buy weapons, to survive on dune. IMO „offworld trade“ starts as soon as spice is harvested/a spice firm is founded. The tech „offworld trade“ in the game means IMO the continuous trade between the faction and their homeworld (or another planet, depending on selected ressource). Also I cannot imagine, that they build up a weapon-factory first, before training the soldiers. No, their weapons were brought to planet from outside! (or even the soldiers themselves were brought in).
By the way, that's one of the major challenges you have, with this mod: Civ is originally a game of development: tech, ressources, cities, religions, governments and improvements, all are developed from “nothing”. Dune on the other hand starts with the “end” of ressource-development, cities and technology. Only a few facets are developed here: on the tech-side the golden path e.g., the fremen religion/utopia. You already have implemented them greatly into your mod. Also the “rest” of the techtree (and it is quite a huge one) was built by you very well. So many dune-related things have been added in the right situation, never leaving gameplay-results behind. Maybe I'm simply fixed on the film/board-game too much :rolleyes:
A simple scenario could “fix” my problem in that case :)


Here is why it would break the game (if each spice gives a bonus). Health and happiness are very binary in nature; they only have any impact when you have less than some threshold. So your aim is not a maximizing function, but a satisficing function. That is, you need just enough so that the constraints are not binding.
I know this. That's why I just „vote“ for a regular bonus: if you have spice +1,+1, else not.
If you can get all the health and happy you need from spice alone, then every other resource in the game basically just became unimportant. Which makes the game incredibly boring, and breaks the balance between resources.
I totally agree :)
If you're just addnig a happy/health bonus to a single spice resource, that is even worse; it is trivially easy for every faction to get a single spice resource. So all you're really doing is making a global increase in health and happiness, and maknig the game easier, and making happiness and healthiness less important as mechanics. And you aren't even adding any marginal incentive to seek out additional spice tiles - which I thought was your whole point.
That was not my aim. It could also come along with reducing the starting health and happy by 1, so that it is „relatived“. Of course this doesn't solve the „one spice is enough“ problem, but maybe it makes AI harvest earlier... at least before they improve ALL other tiles. Also I wouldn't be sure, if AI will be satisfied having one spice, just because of „knowing“ that further doesn't give any more bonus, in vanilla they also build several gold mines, if possible.

Fremen are different than ordinary populations, and do have significant spice in their food and diet, but still not enough to significantly increase their lives, or to addict them.
And the orgies come from the transformed water of life, not from spice consumption.
I think, that's because they don't get the refined material. They even craft baskets out of spice-parts. Maybe it can be compared with drinking thinned beer and hard schnaps :D
Hmmm... was it really the water of life?! Okay, I have to admit, that I am not that firm about that anymore.

The best way to improve spice is to provide more buildings that have cumulative bonuses depending on the total empire-wide number of spice resources you have, not to slap a bunch of bonuses onto just having a single resource.
That's only interesting in later game ;) ...and won't make them harvest earlier :(

I have no problem with this. Its now down to ~+4 commerce. I'd like to see it move back up to 6, with spice industry tech (ie not in the early game).
The one thing we do want to avoid is big early game commerce differences across factions based on the very very random distribution of spice in the early game.
Yes, that's right... I don't want to „overpower“ spice either... I just hope, that the opponent not just starts to harvest, when „having nothing else to do“, because spice should be at least more important than an ordinary (maybe even not manned) mine on a tile without ressources.

I don't see this as a priority.
sadly ;) ...so what priorities do you have?!
Another point to make; it is not necessarily good for the AI to try to change their AI to make them prioritize spice in the early game. They arguably get much better economy bonuses from building windtraps, wells, dew collectors, cottages and mines than they do from building harvesters in the early game.
And that's the point! On the one hand, you seem to be afraid of spice becoming a too strong ressource, on the other even YOU write, that the results even from „normal“ tiles are higher, than from spice. As cities begin with low population and don't grow that fast, it is just normal, that spice is not harvested, when most other tiles bring in better results.

So far... maybe I resume my „deity game“ to become either convinced and finally shut up ;) or become even more rebellious, when seeing, that all the others improve most of their other territory first, too. :D

Greetz, Hived

Have fun with Your Deity game , Hived. :D
i think spice still should have some improvemsts (as bunus per spice tile for certain city buildings, and as benefactor in offworld trade (thats a good direction of Yours)
Simply there is no hurry, because it should be really accurately weighted, to preserve balance and not to create a can of worms.
Old horse is better, and you'll see that game is very hard, really, at highter levels more late in the game.
So enjoy game :), and another advice - just to win 1 epic game of any level. Till the end. Meeting "Win" conditions.
As i told before, DW have different development curve and difficulty curve from BTS, but its close enough , and harder alot than FFH.
You can often go nuts at start of the game, but that also weakening you, because you lose awareness. Caution. And then you meet really tough challenge, so this game is good when played further.

By the way, that's one of the major challenges you have, with this mod: Civ is originally a game of development: tech, ressources, cities, religions, governments and improvements, all are developed from “nothing”. Dune on the other hand starts with the “end” of ressource-development, cities and technology. Only a few facets are developed here: on the tech-side the golden path e.g., the fremen religion/utopia.

I agree with you that Civ is a game about development. I agree with you that the Dune books, Dune 2000 game, and movie are at the end of development where almost all the technology exists. However, the Dune Wars mod for Civ is not about the end of development. If it were, all civs would start with shield generators and heavy carryalls. The Dune Wars civ game is an alternate reality where Arrakis has been shut off from the rest of the universe by some apocalypse. We have not really detailed this out but you can see some concepts in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=328649). So part of the point is to progress through building (rebuilding) this technology.

IMO a game called „dune-wars“ should be themed on battle for spice, such as the dune-game-series from Westwood or the boardgame of 1979 or the film with Sting.

I think what you want is not terribly feasible within the Civ engine. This is still Civilization, we still have the same mechanics (cultural borders, improvements, resources, weird espionage) and the same AI to deal with (particularly for using espionage and sabotage).
Civ is much more about infrastructure, land-terrain and open warfare around cities. It doesn't deal well with trynig to focus on resources way out of cultural borders, or sabotage/espionage, or battling for resources.
Civilization is about cities (tautological). The Civ AI is designed to contest cities. Its not really feasible to get away from that.

And that's the point!
If we make spice better than normal tiles (in particular if we made it better than water tiles) then the AI would risk starving its cities, and the whole game would risk devolving into a crapshoot depending on how much spice you managed to get near you.

Spice is developed by spice blows, which are highly random, particularly in the early game.

Have fun with Your Deity game , Hived. :D
Just "kicked" it. Waited further 50 turns and realized, that they really improve very much (but at least not all) "normal" terrain before getting the spice.


You can often go nuts at start of the game, but that also weakening you, because you lose awareness. Caution. And then you meet really tough challenge, so this game is good when played further.Okay... I'll give it a new try. Knowing now, that it's based on an alternate story, the fact doesn't bother me longer that strong.


I agree with you that Civ is a game about development. I agree with you that the Dune books, Dune 2000 game, and movie are at the end of development where almost all the technology exists. However, the Dune Wars mod for Civ is not about the end of development. If it were, all civs would start with shield generators and heavy carryalls. The Dune Wars civ game is an alternate reality where Arrakis has been shut off from the rest of the universe by some apocalypse. We have not really detailed this out but you can see some concepts in this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=328649). So part of the point is to progress through building (rebuilding) this technology.
Holy one, you should have shown me this thread before! As the last post there was in July, I haven't "seen" it yet :o
In that case it is totally agreeable, that they first have to build up new cities and develop from "zero"... also the fact, that spice is less useful (and as result not harvested) early makes sense, when assuming, that a (completly) different story is behind it, where maybe contact to the guild has been lost (at first)!

I think what you want is not terribly feasible within the Civ engine. This is still Civilization, we still have the same mechanics (cultural borders, improvements, resources, weird espionage) and the same AI to deal with (particularly for using espionage and sabotage).
Civ is much more about infrastructure, land-terrain and open warfare around cities. It doesn't deal well with trynig to focus on resources way out of cultural borders, or sabotage/espionage, or battling for resources.
Civilization is about cities (tautological). The Civ AI is designed to contest cities. Its not really feasible to get away from that.
Yes, that's the problem, I've mentioned above: Civ develops from zero, Dune not.


If we make spice better than normal tiles (in particular if we made it better than water tiles) then the AI would risk starving its cities, and the whole game would risk devolving into a crapshoot depending on how much spice you managed to get near you.
Hmmm... I hoped, that Firaxis taught the AI, to look at all the three components (food, hammer, commerce) when founding cities... but I got no idea, if they really did.

Spice is developed by spice blows, which are highly random, particularly in the early game. Right... but in vanilla you can also start in "tundra woods" on an island or in a vast flood-plain-paradise... thats a matter of luck ;)

Anyway... The link to the "dunewars-story-thread" above made me "trust" again in the mod ;)

Nevertheless I hope, my data of "AI-spice-tile-improvement-behavior" was useful, as it might be good, if they harvest at least before improving "not-yet-needed" tiles...
Probably this change has lower priority than others. Seeing, what has happened from 1.6.1 to 1.6.3, I guess, that there is still much work (e.g. fill the Dune-o-pedia... or find a suitable story and add it to Dune-o-pedia :D)

Greetz, Hived.

Edith says: Gosh it's late.... edith shall be quite and leave here master in peace!

First off this is an awesome mod, you've put me into a civ addiction relapse just in time for final exams...

I wanted to point out an exploit with spice that I discovered. I successfully traded 2 gpt for 1 spice, something that does not seem right. Is there some way to weight the value of spice so the AI won't accept such a net negative deal?

Welcome to civfanatics, and welcome to Dune Wars!

This is a good point, the AI is giving away 4 gold per turn in exchange for 2. We will look into that.

Worse, its giving away *commerce* to get gold. Commerce gets scaled by bonus buildings; diplomatic gold does not.

Civ4BonusInfos.xml (http://modiki.civfanatics.com/index.php/Civ4BonusInfos) has a tag called iAITradeModifier which apparently defines how much the AI values the resource, the higher the number, the more the value. I'm guessing that "value" means that they demand more gold for it, not just that they want to get it more.

Our current values seem to be a bit random:

Groundwater = 25
Polar Ice = 25
Stravidium = 15
Crystal = 10
Uranium = 10
Spice = 5
Everything else = 0

In vanilla BTS, Copper, Iron and Aluminium have this value set to 10, Oil is 20, Uranium is 30.

This seems to be all you've got to make civs place a higher value on specific resources, so I suggest we review iAITradeModifier for our bonuses, perhaps ramp up Spice to 25/30. Also, following the lead from vanilla, Nitrates which is a strategic resource should probably be set to 10.

Changing this value could also reason in a better harvest-behavior (just as i define better ;)). Making AI probably improve spice-tiles, before "regular-non-ressource-tiles".

I'd give it a try :)

Changing this value could also reason in a better harvest-behavior (just as i define better ). Making AI probably improve spice-tiles, before "regular-non-ressource-tiles".

I'm not sure, but I think this value only controls how much value the AI places on a resource in diplomatic negotiations.

How about:

Groundwater = 25 (I guess the idea is to prevent trading for this? But the resource does nothing - maybe we should remove this all together?)
Polar Ice = 25
Stravidium = 15
Crystal = 10
Uranium = 10
Spice = 15
Nitrates = 10
Everything else = 5

I think that Greenhouses should be unlocked by Fresh Water resources. Then it makes sensce abit.

hey,

i think the spice shuold be placed at a high level of trade by the ai as you suggested,

the ai shouldn't be keen to trade spice, maybe 30 is a good num.

I agree with you that Civ is a game about development. I agree with you that the Dune books, Dune 2000 game, and movie are at the end of development where almost all the technology exists. However, the Dune Wars mod for Civ is not about the end of development. If it were, all civs would start with shield generators and heavy carryalls. The Dune Wars civ game is an alternate reality where Arrakis has been shut off from the rest of the universe by some apocalypse. We have not really detailed this out but you can see some concepts in this thread. So part of the point is to progress through building (rebuilding) this technology.

uap, we must remember that in order to make it a noon boring mod, we needed to adapt the story line to dune as much as we can, alternative is a good definition.

But the resource does nothing - maybe we should remove this all together?

Not sure what you mean here. Groundwater is the bonus that you build wells on - no Groundwater, no wells. It is just the same as all the other bonus resources, Crystal, Cereal, etc.

Not sure what you mean here. Groundwater is the bonus that you build wells on - no Groundwater, no wells. It is just the same as all the other bonus resources, Crystal, Cereal, etc.
I think, he means, that it yields no "overall-city-bonus" such as dattes or caladanian wine. Maybe he only want's to remove it from the dipl-screen... but I suppose, that isn't possible.

How about: Groundwater = 25, Polar Ice = 25, ... Spice = 15 ...

I will put that into 1.6.4, but it will be hard to test how much difference it makes.

EDIT: I left the simple resources like burro weed, etc, at 0 to match vanilla. Also we should set values for the offworld trade resources.

Sapho, Semuta, Wine, Slig, Opafire, Soostone, Pundi Rice = 5. These are more valuable than simple resources, but not strategic.

Sardaukar, Sisterhood, Water Debt, Thinking Machines, Ginaz = 10. These give special units so they should have more value.

Also we should set values for the offworld trade resources.

Sapho, Semuta, Wine, Slig, Opafire, Soostone, Pundi Rice = 5. These are more valuable than simple resources, but not strategic.

Sardaukar, Sisterhood, Water Debt, Thinking Machines, Ginaz = 10. These give special units so they should have more value.
I propose to let Ginaz at 5... or set the rest on 15 (although that might be too much), because first four are "personal" ressources, last could be available for everybody. Furthermore, Ginaz can only be used for one unit, while the others (excluding sisterhood?) give several "bonus-options".

Also don't know, if maybe the happy-ress should be higher than health-ress, as -1 health means -1 water, -1 happy means -1 worker... but that's just a feeling ;)

Greetz, Hived!

P.S.: Looking forward for 1.6.4 :)

A little while back somebody suggested that Ginaz Training should unlock a line of powerful melee promotions. I would like to do that, but it takes some work. For now I will leave the weight at 10.

hmmm... so I'm looking forward to see these promotions. :D
...It doesn't matter at all, because this doesn't change the game that much ;)

There are more important things to do.

Maybe he only want's to remove it from the dipl-screen... but I suppose, that isn't possible

Yes, this is what I meant. At the moment, there is a groundwater terrain bonus, and a groundwater strategic resource. The terrain bonus works fine. You build wells on it, and it increases tile yields. Building wells on the groundwater terrain bonus does NOT provide the groundwater strategic resource.
But the groundwater strategic resource still shows up in diplomacy because the AI builds cities on groundwater bonus tiles, and cities on a bonus give that resource even without an improvement.

Also, this could be part of the problem for AI's building cities on top of groundwater terrain bonus; the resource has a high value, so the AI wants to build on top of it in order to capture that resource.

Can we not leave the terrain bonus as is without removing the strategic resource?

Why just not to make Bonuses from Groundwater make stacking with city tile. I mean that cioty tile will act as well, and if there is Desert ingeneering researched that will be 6 water tile. For me it does not make a lot of sense and also solves issues. City on fresh water should grow faster, a lot. It wont be upgrading , stuck on lvl 1 improvement, but thats good , and enough.

Also spice anyways eed boost. That will help for sure with terraforming victory being too easy.

there is a groundwater terrain bonus, and a groundwater strategic resource

There is only one kind of bonus. There is only a single entry for Groundwater in the bonus XML - not a separate terrain bonus and strategic resource.

As far as I know any connected bonus is available for diplomatic trade. So, the reason Groundwater isn't normally is available for trade is that something somewhere (that I haven't figured out) is preventing the bonus from being connected to cities when wells are built on it. Clearly, a city built on Groundwater is automatically connected with it which is why the AI has it sometimes. This is easy to check if you WB a city onto Groundwater.

To clarify; can't we have a Groundwater tile feature without needing a groundwater resource?

For example, in Planetfall there are nutrient, energy and mineral resources that give tile bonuses without creating a resource; this is what we want here.

the reason Groundwater isn't normally is available for trade is that something somewhere (that I haven't figured out)

I assume its just that the Well xmls don't provide the resource. For example, in vanilla, suppose you had a hill tile with iron resource. You could build a mine on it, which would provide the iron resource, or you could build a windmill on it, which would not. Wells are just like windmills, no?

The difference being, somehow the groundwater resource doesn't even say "provides groundwater (requires well)" in-game.

Interesting, in the previous discussion we have decided the AI weight for groundwater should be very high. Perhaps that is not the right decision. Should it be 0 instead of 25? I don't believe there is any direct way to prevent the AI from trading groundwater; obviously it is less likely with a weight of 0. Also, from a long time back, we have set the iAIObjective flag for this resource. It may be interesting to try removing that. The groundwater resource is such an obvious source of food that I believe the AI will pursue it anyway.

@david: Do you have any idea why when a well is built on groundwater it doesn't connect to a city, whereas other bonuses such as baradye are connected when you build an insect farm? I couldn't figure it out.

Ahriman is proposing that Groundwater should never available for diplo trade which would make the AI trade weight irrelevant. Trouble is, I don't know if this is possible. The only thing that makes it rare at the moment is that the AI has to have a city on top of Groundwater to have it connected.

Should it be 0 instead of 25?

I suspect 0 will be better than 25.
There are potential problems either way; with a low value, the AI might try to trade real resources away to get it. With a high value, they might be able to trade it away for real resources.
The latter problem is probably worse than the former.
What happens if you enter -1? Will this stop the AI from ever trading it?

But the problem will go away by itself if we can stop the AI founding cities on groundwater tiles.

I can make the behavior of groundwater match the behavior of other resources, but I don't know how to switch it off. In the improvementinfos file, there is a field "bBonusTrade". Apparently, when you build an improvement on a bonus, this flag controls whether it becomes tradeable. However, when you build a city on a bonus, there is no such flag and it always becomes tradeable.

For an unknown reason, the well improvements are the only ones which have this flag set to false. This exactly explains the behavior we are seeing; it is only tradeable if a city is built on groundwater, not if a well is built on groundwater.

By setting this flag to true, I can make groundwater tradeable when a well is built. This way the groundwater resource will work the same as other resources.

We need to have something which marks where wells can be built; this is what resources are for. So we cannot remove it, and it is not somehow "left over" from an earlier implementation. If we make the AIObjective flag 0, and the trade weight 0, it will still show up as tradeable but the AI won't have much interest in it. I think this is the best we can do.

By setting this flag to true, I can make groundwater tradeable when a well is built. This way the groundwater resource will work the same as other resources.

Ok, but I don't think this is something we want to do: I think groundwater works better as tile bonus only.

Another thought: does the AI get groundwater when it builds forts on them? As it often does.

We need to have something which marks where wells can be built; this is what resources are for. So we cannot remove it

Understood.

I think this is the best we can do.
Along with changes to city founding, this should be fine.

does the AI get groundwater when it builds forts on them? As it often does.

This is because of the iAIObjective flag. This forces the AI to have high interest in colonizing nearby and fortifying all instances of these resources, like oil in vanilla. I would like to remove this flag. I "assume" the AI will still be interested enough in groundwater because of all the food bonuses, but it requires some testing. I have entered it into the issues spreadsheet.

This forces the AI to have high interest in colonizing nearby and fortifying all instances of these resources, like oil in vanilla. I would like to remove this flag.

I have no problem with the AI building forts on resources that are not within its BFCs. This is actually good behavior; it expands AI culture and gives them resources.

Its just that groundwater is an exception.

Also, arguably forts on groundwater should provide fresh water access. Sometimes there is groundwater not in any city BFC, but the tile should still provide water for cottage bonus and terraforming.

What about "restricting" to found on groundwater? Make it just as Mesa to an "unsettlable" tile. That way AI also doesn't throw away the bonus it yields.
...but let me have a guess: Only terrains can be declared "unsettlable", not ressources?!

Greetz, Hived.

When I release 1.6.4, it will have a new way to find starting locations for civs. This will never place a starting city on any kind of bonus. In the future, I will add the same code into the AI settler location choices. Then AI cities will never be placed on bonuses. For the human player, do we really want to *prevent* it?

Great, that should solve the "tradable groundwater" problem.
IMO human players should be allowed, to settle those terrains. Giving ground water an AI-trade-value of 0 would also prevent abuse of "innocent" AI by trading it for really worthy ressources.

Greetz, Hived.

For the human player, do we really want to *prevent* it?

No. There are certain circumstances where founding on a bonus makes sense, to include as many other resources and mesa tiles as possible.
I'm leery of absolutely forbidding it to the AI too. We could ban groundwater, but not *every* resource.

FWIW, check out the succession game going on (Epic gamespeed); nearly turn 200 and we have almost no spice.

So the AI's lack of spice by turn 100 or so is not an indication of weak AI; as humans we have other priorities too.

I think its fine that spice doesn't become important until the midgame.

I think that spice should be sagnificant alwasy6. At any stage. That is how it is in books. In films. In games. I think it should be more importanmt as concept. And, dont tell me it is not important or try to convince me. I am ok with it as it is, but still, iu think it should be bit more than it is now. Its just right. Atm spice is too weak compared to importance of it in books.

Since david has suggested focusing on Wonders next perhaps he can make the SDK change (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=336948) to allow some varied Spice powered wonders.

Since david has suggested focusing on Wonders next perhaps he can make the SDK change (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=336948) to allow some varied Spice powered wonders.

good idea, indeed.
Also there was not any change to refeneries that add commerce points to each spice tile harvested per empire.
There was alot of discussion, and not all in this thread.

I think that spice should be sagnificant alwasy6. That is how it is in books.

In the books there hasn't been a disaster that has cut off contact with the rest of the galaxy. What value spice, if you can't export it?

I don't think there is any way, given the inherent exponentiation factors, to have spice be important in the early game and not overpowered in the mid-late game, AND still have normal tiles work. Most gdp still has to come from having people in cities working tiles (or specialists).

It should not interfere with improving tiles. Perhaps some bonus for just tiles owned. If not then some more bonuses for tiles harvested. But it is weak now. In books, spice is much more potent. Life-extension. Spice-Agony. Spice-fibers (various industrial uses). I can add more of them....just no need - thats enough.

It should not interfere with improving tiles

?
Of course it does. You only have so many workers. If they're building harvesters, then they're not building improvements. Its an opportunity cost.

Perhaps some bonus for just tiles owned
I dislike this.
a) Logically, spice doesn't do any good unless you harvest it.
b) Its lame if you get the benefit without having to divert effort into building harvesters.
This is like David's problem with putting KH into the tech tree; if you want a benefit, you should have to divert some effort towards getting it, not just get lucky by having spice blows near you.

?
Of course it does. You only have so many workers. If they're building harvesters, then they're not building improvements. Its an opportunity cost.


I dislike this.
a) Logically, spice doesn't do any good unless you harvest it.
b) Its lame if you get the benefit without having to divert effort into building harvesters.
This is like David's problem with putting KH into the tech tree; if you want a benefit, you should have to divert some effort towards getting it, not just get lucky by having spice blows near you.


You didnt understood me, perhaps i was not so clear.

The fixing of spice should not change Yeld/ improvement priorities.
1. It should increase and encourage player to own spice tiles more at later stage.
2. whatever, there just need more bonuses.
You arguing with some points but leaving main idea aside - Spice is too weak in the mod. Much less important that it apears in books.

You didnt understood me, perhaps i was not so clear.

The fixing of spice should not change Yeld/ improvement priorities.

I still don't understand what you're trying to say.

You arguing with some points but leaving main idea aside - Spice is too weak in the mod

I don't think that spice is that weak, I have posted screenshots of cases where spice was powering 1/3 of my economy. Its weak in the early game, but I don't see this as a problem.

I think all we need are some commerce tile yield increases from harvester improvement with spice industry tech (or civic), and then a handful of buildings and wonders that give benefits with more spice, like in the sdk modification thread.

That will be plenty.

I think all we need are some commerce tile yield increases from harvester improvement with spice industry tech (or civic), and then a handful of buildings and wonders that give benefits with more spice, like in the sdk modification thread.

That will be plenty.
That is thing i telling you about. why arguing then?
Thats a solution, i talking about. Why denying it?
Thats what i trying to say. Those 2 things.
Necessity of moderate to light boosting of spice.
And opposition to fact that game's spice is less important in noticeable amount than it is in the books.

Now you're just being annoying.

Thats what i trying to say. Those 2 things.

Neither of these things will improve spice in the early game. So, your statement directly contradicts:
I think that spice should be sagnificant alwasy6

Which is the one I have a problem with.

Let's all stay calm here also, please.

I am not being annoying , but perceiving the right balance.
also, please explain how my statement contradicts this:

I think that spice should be sagnificant alwasy6

Refinery is early game building.

Also, i can call "annoying" behaviour, where one just deny right full observation of another, without any basement to such denial. I am no a first who tells that spice is weak atm, and not a last. The thing, which is wrong, though, is conditioning of such poster as i am, from your side. If i sounded to harsh in that other thread, please forgive me, But also, please get a note, that sometimes i can say " Ok, i was wrong, you have a point". And i think that is good thing to know to do for everyone.
All my point was ithat spice is still weak.
You disconnected sentences in my posts, and denied them separately. But the point was plain and simple - Spice need boost. Why to crush my sayings without any appreciation of my observation, effort, and, at least, intelligence i put into this matter?
You, also, can use a logic for counting "how stupid this lad might be". Atm my feeling that your result is too high. May be it is really, but i would halve that result, according to replies i get.

FWIW, check out the succession game going on (Epic gamespeed); nearly turn 200 and we have almost no spice.

So the AI's lack of spice by turn 100 or so is not an indication of weak AI; as humans we have other priorities too.

I think its fine that spice doesn't become important until the midgame.
I'm okay with that, since I know the background story (or let's say, the possible backgrounds :D) of DW.
...but also Slvynn is right: The spice IS the ressource on Dune and should be the most important thing, at the latest, when "offworld-trade" is researched (just following your argument with no offplanet-contact in beginning)... but as the succession game shows (and many other games, including most terraforming victories, as they often have only few spice), it doesn't matter that much, if you have much spice, few or even no spice at all... maybe raising (late?) tech-costs could solve the problem. Doing that in combination with increasing spice-output, the commerce output AND the "offworld-troop-recruitment" would profit.

Since david has suggested focusing on Wonders next perhaps he can make the SDK change to allow some varied Spice powered wonders.
Also the implementation of regular buildings (maybe a market-orientated building giving 1 gold/spice or something - compare it with tribunal, giving mostly 3-4 gold savings) wouldn't be that bad IMO.

All in all, spice still doesn't mean too much in game, as there are just some "spice-tile-upgrades", but no spice-"trading", exporting, storing... being honest, also a (spice-) refinery should not give +25% hammers, but +25% commerce/gold... or what else if not spice is refinated with the refinery building? The refinery could be the first spice-building, giving +5% (or +10% if too weak) commerce/gold for each spice ressource in stock.

Edit: Having ONE game, where 1/3 of economy (let's say commerce ;)) is powered by spice, is not a strong enough arguement against spice improvement IMO... I'd even say, it's an argument FOR spice improvement. I read it like: "in most games, spice makes up at most a third of economy. Most economy is granted via cottages or non-spice ressources."
IMO there should be games (not all, but it should be possible), where at least 2/3 of economy is running via spice... especially, as soon as the guild has "returned" to the planet.

Greetz, Hived.

Refinery is early game building.

The refinery building is powerful enough already. It does not need any further buffs.
Nobody called you stupid.
The rest of your comments are almost incomprehensible.
"Atm my feeling that your result is too high. May be it is really, but i would halve that result, according to replies i get. "??

The spice IS the ressource on Dune and should be the most important thing
If you're running a spice economy, rather than a terraforming economy, then spice *is* already very important.
Spice should not be the most important thing if you're a terraformer.

maybe a market-orientated building giving 1 gold/spice or something

1 gold per spice would be far too high. That would be +20 gold in every city with 20 spice resources, or +140 gold per turn with 7 cities and 20 spice resources.
A magnitude more like 0.15 gold per spice is more reasonable.

it doesn't matter that much, if you have much spice, few or even no spice at all... maybe raising (late?) tech-costs could solve the problem
Sure it matters. Without any spice, your economy will be much smaller, even more so once we add a few more of these buildings.

honest, also a (spice-) refinery should not give +25% hammers, but +25% commerce/gold
This is an interesting idea. It is a little problematic I think how lategame you have to go before you get a commerce booster building. Maybe this should be a commerce building instead of a hammer building, and we could create another hammer booster building somewhere else, maybe at crystal materials or sand farms (both currently very weak techs).
Rename the refinery "spice refinery", and have it give a trader rather than a techman specialist slot, and then create a hammer booster building. Workshop, maybe? Factory, and rename the current factory to manufacturing plant?

but no spice-"trading", exporting
I think the idea is this is what the house spice firm represents. This is what you're doing with the spice.

The rest of your comments are almost incomprehensible.
"Atm my feeling that your result is too high. May be it is really, but i would halve that result, according to replies i get. "??


I am sure this sounds proper, but i will explain if further.
In plain words - i think, i feel from tone of your posts, that you undestimate my effort and intelligence i've put into testing runs, games, reading and understanding books (yep i just finished reading all missing books and re-reading of ones i had read is started.) .
Also as well i am not alone, and did not exposed myself as being deliberately incomprehensible. Sorry if i make typos and all that, and have bad spelling at times, but i am not native english speaker, still i know (i think) how to use my language even it is not my native one.

You, also, can use a logic for counting "how stupid this lad might be". Atm my feeling that your result is too high. May be it is really, but i would halve that result, according to replies i get.

that is about feeling i get when reading your numerous "denial 99%" posts, with notice that alot of points been ignored.
Peace man, i got tired from this arguing. I'll better create few colorful pixels and feel much better than i am feeling now..

You need to realize that people disagreeing with you is not a personal attack or insult. Its just disagreement.

Good design comes from critically evaluating ideas, not from adopting changes uncritically out of "respect".

I appreciate that you are not a native English speaker, and that your English skills are far better than mine are in your language (Russian?) or anything other than English. However, your English is often very difficult to understand.

Edit: Having ONE game, where 1/3 of economy (let's say commerce ;)) is powered by spice, is not a strong enough arguement against spice improvement IMO... I'd even say, it's an argument FOR spice improvement. I read it like: "in most games, spice makes up at most a third of economy. Most economy is granted via cottages or non-spice ressources."

I appreciate this input from the folks who are new to the mod as of 1.6. In earlier versions such as 1.3 - 1.5, we have tweaked the value of spice up and down several times. I am not sure it is perfect, but we have found a problem when it was higher.

The design goal was to basically match vanilla archipelago commerce rates at turn 255 on standard speed. From many autoplays of vanilla archipelago, an average AI player has commerce in the 200-250 range. The problem is that today in DW, a good human player can easily get 300-400 points of commerce per turn by turn 255, while the AI can only get 150-200 points. Having a high commerce translates into high research rates, going quickly through the tech tree, and/or high treasury (gold), which can be used for many things.

So, simply raising the commerce rate of spice will make things too easy for the human player with these settings, and it further increases the gap between the human player and the AI player. Ahriman is giving one data point, but hopefully this post tells a little more about the history. It is more than one data point. We have tweaked it several times and tested.

You may reply, "Just make the AI smarter". I agree, but I am not smart enough to make the AI smarter. We have discussed this recently also in the 1.6 feedback thread. Please do make suggestions, but if possible, please think of the effect on this AI gap.

You need to realize that people disagreeing with you is not a personal attack or insult. Its just disagreement.

Good design comes from critically evaluating ideas, not from adopting changes uncritically out of "respect".

I appreciate that you are not a native English speaker, and that your English skills are far better than mine are in your language (Russian?) or anything other than English. However, your English is often very difficult to understand.

again, man, lets make peace, sorry if i being harsh at times.
And i know i am hard to understand.
In my language i explain myself in riddles, quite often. Like Yoda. :D In for which is not plain at all.
simply i make observations and being tired at evening, knowing my effort i put not things, and alot of denial of my statements, which are not just illusion...
Yes my motherlanguage is Russian, but i know more 2 languages at levels bit lower than mother language but higher than english, because i live in not russian-speaking country .

Ah, and sorry for offtopic post. If it to be removed - please remove it :P

Edit: Having ONE game, where 1/3 of economy (let's say commerce ) is powered by spice, is not a strong enough arguement against spice improvement IMO
a) The 1/3 is not an abberation, I regularly get this by late-midgame playing as a spice industry civ.
b) Economy and commerce are not the same. Economy is gold and beakers. 1/3 of commerce is MORE than 1/3 of beakers, because the commerce income from spice is concentrated in a single city, where you will have maximized your percentage boosters (universities, banks, etc), and have things like Academies built.

... I'd even say, it's an argument FOR spice improvement. I read it like: "in most games, spice makes up at most a third of economy. Most economy is granted via cottages or non-spice ressources."
IMO there should be games (not all, but it should be possible), where at least 2/3 of economy is running via spice... especially, as soon as the guild has "returned" to the planet.

I disagree with this. Spice should *never* be approaching 2/3 of the economy size.

The civ engine is, fundamentally, built around cities, and population, and that population working tiles or acting as specialists.

I think the engine and AI will break down if we try to divert too far from this, and make income just come from improvements within your cultural borders.

The AI knows how to attack cities, and defend its own. The AI does NOT know how to contest areas of spice, or protect its harvesters from being pillaged. And I suspect that it is not really feasible to try to teach it this.

If you make spice too important, you destroy the AI because it is easily hamstrung by a human player who can cut off its spice income.

The problem is that today in DW, a good human player can easily get 300-400 points of commerce per turn by turn 255, while the AI can only get 150-200 points
This is a good point.

Human exploitation of fort culture is part of this. Maybe we should remove the ability to build forts outside cultural borders, since the AI can't do this?

I don't know anything about development. I like the way the game plays now, but if you want it to be as realistic as possible, then spice would have to be closer to 99% of all commerce. Maybe 75%, with water being the remainder. I imagine that this is pretty much impossible with this type of engine. I think there is a Dune game out there where spice is the only resource in existence, but this is not that game right? You guys are doing a great job by the way. I can't seem to put the game away.

hey people,

there has been much debate on spice, and still going.

i always wanted dune wars to have a system of resource compiling:

spice need to be compiled - in the game youll have a counter - similar to solaris/money
and that counter will indicate how much spice do you have in your empire .

you start compiling the minute you have 1 spice resource, thus youll get +1 to your spice counter.

the spice will be used both for commerce - as it is today - with the corporations system.
and second - in order to build certain things - buildings, units and wonders, youll have to pay in spice. like a sand rider will cost 50 hammers, and say 10 spice units, so if you have 30 spice units in your counter - when you build this unit - 10 spice units will be reduced from your counter.

so,
i think this will give spice the proper importance we need it to have in dune wars - spice is needed both for money and both for building most of the important units and buildings.


we have a similar system imbibed in the dune wars code, only that the cost is based on money - you can add to every unit goldcost - which upon building that unit - youll have to pay the preqeq sum of money.

theres some code that was written a long time ago - its called fuel mod, it has some sort of compiling mechanics.


i have a very old code that we can use - it adds two tags - iron cost and food cost, this code adds the ability to compile food and iron, and afterward, to make a unit cost amount of iron or/and amount of food. but the code is missing proper display , i will make testes since i cant remember how it looks.
if this idea will be accepted, maybe david, our only active sdk coder, can develop this code a bit more to our needs.

These ideas are interesting, but this would be quite a radical change to the economy system of the mod.

i always wanted dune wars to have a system of resource compiling:

I don't really understand how this system would be functionally different from renaming Gold into spice.

Besides, why would you stockpile spice? Basically the value of spice to you is money, so you export it when you produce it.

The only reason to stockpile a commodity is if you think the price of it will go up in the future (or can make the price go up by restricting supply).

n order to build certain things - buildings, units and wonders,

Why should these things cost spice? Its not like they need it as part of the manufacturing process. Spice is just a valuable trade commodity, its not involved in the construction process.

you can add to every unit goldcost
Why would you want to do this? I think this would just confuse players and the AI (and human players) without really adding anything much to the game.

I think just making spice valuable as gold (as the current system does) is much cleaner.

I think we need to work with the civ engine economy as much as possible, rather than trying to fight it, in ways that they AI will not understand.

well,

i know theres no reaon for spice to be a part of a units cost,

but you would agree with me, that spice will be a bit more important in the game.


your right about spice is money, but perhaps spice can give like half money half stockpiled.

but yeah, we need to give spice some more weight as a gold provider.


how about in some way, we can have a special settler that will found cities on desert?
the building in those cities will be limited, but their cultural border will cover enough spice,
so you wont be depended on having "coastal cities" with spice access.
it will be something like a spice base that can be disbanded any time.

idunno, im just thinking out laud.

I think that the best way to make spice more important is to add a few more buildings that boost the yield of spice, as in this thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=336948, rather than trying to change the mechanic to somehow make it stockpiled separately.

I think its much easier to just have gold as the only stockpile.

And not too important; as I suggested in post 81, making spice too important is dangerous in that it advantages the human player over the AI, since the human can understand the importance of targetting enemy spice income through pillage.

how about in some way, we can have a special settler that will found cities on desert?

In terms of harvesters and coastal culture, I think a useful analogy from earth is to think about fisheries, and exclusive economic zones.
Most fishing (historically) occured somewhat near coastal port cities; fishing boats venture out from port only so far, catch their harvest, and return to port. They can fish anywhere within a limited range, dependent on technology, and over time (as technology improved, and as in-shore fisheries were depleted), they ventured further out from the coast.
When an area is near two or more countries (ie when their zones compete), the fishing rights access to those areas in contest was determined by the relative political power of the rivals (though a fixed difference for all countries in modern times, with the law of the sea convention).

It still isn't really feasible to go out into the ocean and support floating towns.

This is basically what we have in the Dune mod, and I think it works pretty well as a mechanic; the desert is dangerous, and so you can only venture out so far into the desert to harvest spice, and this increases over time as your cities grow and become able to support more distant spice operations.
And when contesting spice with neighbors, political influence (culture) determines who gets it.

So while I think its interesting to have desert cities (and not impossible to code - see Planetfall), I think it isn't really necessary, and that trying to introduce it would have many challenges and problems.
1) Very hard to get the AI to use it effectively, to found them, to defend them or to attack them.
2) There are no water sources or bonus resources or improvements (other than spice/harvesters) in the deserts, you couldn't really have a city out there, and it couldn't really manage
3) It doesn't seem very logical; the desert really isn't capable of supporting life, and any settlement would risk being destroyed by storms.
4) It doesn't fit with the fluff well. There aren't any settlements out in the desert.
5) It would get attacked and destroyed by sandworms.
6) I think it would weaken some of the atmosphere of the harsh, dangerous desert that is risky to to cross.

im just thinking out laud.
Understood, its good to throw ideas out and see which ones might work.

* * *

I think this is my favorite idea from the thread above:

honest, also a (spice-) refinery should not give +25% hammers, but +25% commerce/gold
This is an interesting idea. It is a little problematic I think how lategame you have to go before you get a commerce booster building. Maybe this should be a commerce building instead of a hammer building, and we could create another hammer booster building somewhere else, maybe at crystal materials or sand farms (both currently very weak techs).
Rename the refinery "spice refinery", and have it give a trader rather than a techman specialist slot, and then create a hammer booster building. Workshop, maybe? Factory, and rename the current factory to manufacturing plant?

I think that hammer boosting building is not necessary. (i mean + hammer boost from refinery early game)
I'll remind you that hammers in DW is something veeeeery common. Its big difference from vanilla. Also, few times i remeber mentions that things to build like wonders / units are too cheap. So perhaps best way to fix several issues is just remake Refinery bonus, and remove this hammer bonus , leaving it to automatic factories and such. Then automatic Factories, and perhaps Ix mechanics will have more importance.

I think that hammer boosting building is not necessary. (i mean + hammer boost from refinery early game)

The only reason I suggested a new hammer boosting building is if the Refinery becomes a commerce booster rather than hammer booster.

I don't like changing the refinery to commerce and then having no hammer boosters in the game until the late-midgame with industrialism.
We need some kind of forge building.

I think its much easier to just have gold as the only stockpile.By the way, I think having access to a lot of spice resources at once should be emphasised, stockpiling doesn't fit as well, feel-wise. It's "The Spice must flow!", not "Spice: Gotta collect it all!" - a stockpile would encourage saving it which "feels" wrong.

Cheers, LT.

The only reason I suggested a new hammer boosting building is if the Refinery becomes a commerce booster rather than hammer booster.

I don't like changing the refinery to commerce and then having no hammer boosters in the game until the late-midgame with industrialism.
We need some kind of forge building.
Where are your well known arguments? I agree to Slvynn: An early "Hammer-booster" is not necessary, as hammers are very common and units relativly cheap.

By the way, I think having access to a lot of spice resources at once should be emphasised, stockpiling doesn't fit as well, feel-wise. It's "The Spice must flow!", not "Spice: Gotta collect it all!" - a stockpile would encourage saving it which "feels" wrong.
Cheers, LT.
C'mon! The Baron himself had very much spice-reserves on his home-planet (remembering Thufirs report?). Keeping spice "at home" is as common as leaving money on your bank-account... especially in this mod, where the contact to the guild is not available at the beginning, spice should be stored... but game-engine-orientated, AI-orientated, it is not that easy to store it really...

...about spice-harvest out of cultural borders:
In the books/films carry-alls were mainly used, to „carry“ or lift harvesters in areas far away from home. My suggestion: carry-alls have an „own“ harvesting ability. You can go with them on spice tiles and they harvest spice „directly“ to the guild, so that spice doesn't go via your spice firm (would be harder to implement, i think) (if possible, spice-tiles without harvesters, so that „double-harvesting“ is not possible). If possible, carry-alls should also not be affected by worm, but therefore by storm :-) ...btw. the storm doesn't „kill“ units in the desert, does he?
they are rewarded with Solaris of course.
Yes, Ahriman, even this will be hard to be taught to AI... but what will not? As carryalls are quite expensive, I hope, that this will not allow players to "cheat" by building carry-all-armies and getting millions of solaris... and when, he has achieved a great economical victory!

Greetz, HivedOne.

Where are your well known arguments? I agree to Slvynn: An early "Hammer-booster" is not necessary, as hammers are very common and units relativly cheap.

Actually, units are now slightly more expensive than in vanilla, and cities are slightly smaller than in vanilla. I think it would be too hard to build a decent army in the midgame and build Wonders without a hammer-booster. I'd be fine with such a building coming slightly later than a tier2 tech, but it should be well before the quite late industrialism tech.
Besides, boosters of beakers vs commerce vs hammer buildings help in terms of city specialization/differentiation, which is a nice strategic factor.

C'mon! The Baron himself had very much spice-reserves on his home-planet

The Baron had stockpiles only because:
a) he was stealing from the Emperor, and so had difficulty selling spice in large quantities on the market
b) he controlled the level of spice output, and so he could be fairly confident that spice prices were going to rise in the future, hence why he stockpiled spice.

Other Houses did not have spice stockpiles.
The Baron's reserves are noteworthy precisely because of how unusual they are; they are the exception that proves the rule.

The comparison would be: how many people (or governments) do you see hording gold bars today?

..about spice-harvest out of cultural borders:
In the books/films carry-alls were mainly used, to „carry“ or lift harvesters in areas far away from home. My suggestion: carry-alls have an „own“ harvesting ability.

I think this has all the same problems that every other "harvesting outside culture" mechanic would have. I'm not going to repeat them all there.

Yes, Ahriman, even this will be hard to be taught to AI... but what will not?
Existing mechanics that do not fight against the AI (like workers building improvements to capture resources) do not need to be taught to the AI.
I think we should try to minimize the number of features that would need new AI, and limit them to those that would provide significant gameplay enhancements.
The more features we have to try to teach through hard-coding, the worse the AI will perform.
And IIRC a unit can only have one AI routine - if carryalls have a harvester AI, then then the AI won't be able to effectively use them as transports anymore.

Another idea coming to mind - atm Harks lack special features as civ because of nerfed slavery. Mabby add UB to them something related with Spice stockpiling? :P

Actually, units are now slightly more expensive than in vanilla, and cities are slightly smaller than in vanilla. I think it would be too hard to build a decent army in the midgame and build Wonders without a hammer-booster. I'd be fine with such a building coming slightly later than a tier2 tech, but it should be well before the quite late industrialism tech.
Besides, boosters of beakers vs commerce vs hammer buildings help in terms of city specialization/differentiation, which is a nice strategic factor.okay... that's an argument... I just wanted to know, why there is a need for a hammer "booster".



The Baron had stockpiles only because:
a) he was stealing from the Emperor, and so had difficulty selling spice in large quantities on the market
b) he controlled the level of spice output, and so he could be fairly confident that spice prices were going to rise in the future, hence why he stockpiled spice.

so you agree, that in this mod, where the emperor is no longer the boss and where in the beginning no contact to the guild is available, so the most needing costumer (paying the best price) is not yet there, stockpiling spice would be logical? :D

Other Houses did not have spice stockpiles.
Of course they had not... because they were not on dune (at least the last couple of years).

The comparison would be: how many people (or governments) do you see hording gold bars today?[QUOTE] No it's not the right comparison, because we have a "world-wide-trade", we are confident, having a piece of paper, that says: "You possess 3 gold bars in Philadelphia" (or something similar;))... in this mod, it's more like "keeping the oil shares, until the big oil hunger comes".
Don't get me wrong, I also think, that spice-keeping is hard to implement... but I also say, that it would be more realistic... that doesn't mean, that it has to be changed, I am happy with this state, but I just cannot deny it, just because it is not programable.

[QUOTE=Ahriman;8645595]I think this has all the same problems that every other "harvesting outside culture" mechanic would have. I'm not going to repeat them all there.
Existing mechanics that do not fight against the AI (like workers building improvements to capture resources) do not need to be taught to the AI. Yes, that's right, but changing nothing (but names and graphics), won't make it a dune game, but a civ that looks like Dune.
I think we should try to minimize the number of features that would need new AI, and limit them to those that would provide significant gameplay enhancements.
The more features we have to try to teach through hard-coding, the worse the AI will perform.I agree in principle... but what are significant gameplay enhancements? IMO these are not "some special units" having "new" combat abilities, that's just the icing on the cake, but fundamental changes, such as implementing spice-blows, disappearing ressources (faster if harvested, slower with some civic), making water to sand, but letting several units cross it, making AI worker "walk on sand"... that's it, what makes Dune Wars to Dune Wars!!
...that doesn't mean, that each good idea has to be implemented, this decision is still made by the programmer(s)... who have the hard work to do :(

And IIRC a unit can only have one AI routine - if carryalls have a harvester AI, then then the AI won't be able to effectively use them as transports anymore.That's no problem at all: two possible solutions:
a) fast solution: make two different carry-all units: civilian and military
b) better solution: give them in cities a promo-button (such like galleys in FFH, make them change their crew), that also "exchanges" the unit(type).

Greetz, Hived.

so you agree, that in this mod, where the emperor is no longer the boss and where in the beginning no contact to the guild is available, so the most needing costumer (paying the best price) is not yet there, stockpiling spice would be logical?

Sure, I guess in the very early game, before offworld trade tech, Houses probably stockpile the small amounts that they harvest before they ship it offworld.

But after that.... there is a galactic-wide trade. So yes, there is no need for a stockpile, and the gold analogy works perfectly.

There is no "big spice hunger" coming.

Yes, that's right, but changing nothing (but names and graphics), won't make it a dune game, but a civ that looks like Dune.

We've changed plenty. And there are plenty of changes that you can make that add flavor without fighting the AI.

I agree in principle... but what are significant gameplay enhancements
In the mod so far?
1) Amphibious invasion AI (cephalo)
2) Homeworld unit purchase AI (Koma)
In progress:
3) Settler city site selection AI (David/Koma)
4) Mentat use AI (David)

These are all major changes with significant gameplay enhancements.
I don't think that something that risks breaking the game's economic model, and being much easier for humans to exploit than the AI, would be an enhancement. How are you going to code the AI to intelligently contest areas outside their cultural borders? Thats such a complex goal that it is much harder than the more limited AI tweaks being made.

b) better solution: give them in cities a promo-button (such like galleys in FFH, make them change their crew), that also "exchanges" the unit(type).
The AI doesn't use the crew changes in FFH, and certainly wouldn't easily be able to do so intelligently.

Agree, all changes that should be done should be related only to bonus per resource mechanics (BTS corporation) avoiding mechanics that are will not work with AI and crush economic model.

Refinery should have +25% commerce with spice (using mechanics whihc were posted by keldath)

perhaps +2 gold per worked tile yeild

and perhaps some units production bonus with this resource (RM for example)

I don't really like adding bonuses that are "builds faster with spice" or "+25% commerce with spice" for the Spice resource, just because everyone will have at least one spice, so the constraint is really non-binding.

I think all spice bonuses should depend on the number of spice resources, not the presence of a single resource.

Also, a building that was both +25% hammers AND +25 commerce in the early game would be too much.
I don't mind a spice refinery being a commerce-booster building, but we need a separate hammer-booster building, not reusing the same building for both.

i mean to remove hammer boost.

Also RM is unit that in lore require spice, btw , there alot of quotations and mentions about that.

Also RM is unit that in lore require spice, btw , there alot of quotations and mentions about that.

So what? It is just messy to add resource constraints that will never bind, or conditional bonuses that always bind. There will never be a case where you have enough tech to get RMs but don't have a single spice resource.

Besides, the amount of spice needed by a Reverend Mother is tiny compared to the amount of spice generated by a harvester in a year.

Hi there

First up, thanks to everyone for all the work that's gone into the mod! It looks great, and while I've only played a couple of hours I'm sure it'll occupy a fair few more.. :)

To be honest I was surprised by the sheer amount of spice on the map though, and its relatively low value compared to how I imagined it reading the book. I've had a couple of "left-field" ideas that I thought I'd throw out there in case there's any value to them.

I haven't done any modding other than tweaking the XML of vanilla to make it a more "laptop-friendly" game so I don't know how realistic any of this is. :) Bear with me if it's way too ambitious.

Random idea #1:

What about treating spice as a unit, rather than a resource? e.g. spice is a barbarian unit that spawns randomly all over the map, with 0 movement and 0 strength. It can only be captured by ground units (e.g. a harvester unit), and can then load onto (ideally) that same harvester unit, or into a thopter. When it gets back to a city it can perform a Great Merchant-style trade mission (but in your own city) for cash.

In terms of AI (remembering I have no real idea what I'm talking about :)) could the harvester follow a similar line to a work boat seeking an offshore resource? And similarly for the unit, follow a Great Merchant on a transport seeking overseas city path?

Alternatively you could say that once the harvester got to the spice, the pick up and return and export is automatic, and treat it as a goody hut (but with lots of gold).

Gameplay-wise you'd have plenty of spice to go around in the early game, so no incentive for an early rush on your neighbours. Mid-game you'd start fighting over faraway spice deposits and late game you'd be taking out rivals to stop them competing for all the new spice popping up. You'd be running deficit research most of the time, with your coffers occasionally boosted by new sales of large spice deposits.

If the harvester could be set to "automatic" like a work boat you wouldn't need much micromanagement (unless there are worms about) and the AI should be able to compete on a similar level. (Can the AI be set to escort units - i.e. send some thopters along with its harvester? And to have plenty of scouts flying around at all times so it can see where new spice is? Oh, and can barbarians be set to spawn in unfogged tiles?)

If that could all work you could have spice a lot rarer, more valuable, and harvested outside cultural borders.

Random idea #2:

What if spice was a strategic resource that can be traded with a non-playing Guild, for off-planet strategic resources providing a range of bonuses? i.e. they don't have cities but have contact and will trade with everyone, and will "buy" all your spice in return for imports from other planets.

That way you could get a real bonus for each new tile of spice harvested. The Guild would have one of each resource for each player.

Resources could provide e.g. water +1 (only 1 or 2), happiness +1 (a few), health +1 (a few more), commerce +1 (heaps) or whatever other bonuses can be provided (maybe some needed for units - fuel sources, construction materials that can't be found on Dune etc.)

I guess you'd still have the problem of being able to pillage the AI harvesters.. maybe if they were rarer it could protect them like it does with Iron/Oil etc in vanilla.

Anyway, just a couple of random ideas, I might play a couple of games and see if I can think of anything else.

Cheers

Hi forty,
Welcome to Dunewars, and thanks very much for the feedback. I'm glad you're enjoying the mod!

Unfortunately, I don't think idea #1 is very feasible. Spice works much better as a resource than as a unit in terms of AI and art, and having to move captured spice "units" back to cities could be unnecessary micromanagement.

As for #2, part of this is kindof what we have already. The idea behind the commerce income from spice is that this comes from exporting the resource offworld. We also already have a few resources from happiness and health that are imported from offworld. I don't think that getting a new resource for each spice tile would work very well; I think its better to have lots of spice tiles, than just a small handful, and so the benefits of each spice tile can't be too large. I also prefer the system where spice gives you commerce, rather than directly giving you happiness or health type bonuses.

Importing water from offworld isn't really very feasible - just too expensive. But we're already planning to add some other benefits from Spice through wonders, like a Prescience chamber that gives espionage points depending on the number of spice resources you control.
I also don't think that making spice a rare resource that you could fortify and protect with an army on a single tile would make much sense, fluffwise.

Thanks very much for the ideas though, we're always glad to hear feedback from players. We're certainly planning to make spice a little more valuable, since "spice isn't important enough" is one of the common player feedback messages we get.

having to move captured spice "units" back to cities could be unnecessary micromanagement.

Yeah, agreed. I hate micromanagement! I like how water is so scarce in this mod that whipping production isn't as important as it is in vanilla. Being able to leave cities to just produce without having to check happiness every few turns is great :)

I guess what I'd like to see is spice all over the planet being fought over - but I guess that might just be impossible for the AI.

As for #2, part of this is kindof what we have already. The idea behind the commerce income from spice is that this comes from exporting the resource offworld. We also already have a few resources from happiness and health that are imported from offworld.

Cool, guess I need to play a bit more, I got up to importing units but not resources.

I also prefer the system where spice gives you commerce, rather than directly giving you happiness or health type bonuses.

Yep, that is definitely more "realistic".

But we're already planning to add some other benefits from Spice through wonders, like a Prescience chamber that gives espionage points depending on the number of spice resources you control.

Cool.. I like the idea of increasing benefits based on how much spice you control. At the moment you only really want to harvest the spice that your cities can work as a tile. Increasing benefits would provide an incentive to harvest more - but then there's the opportunity cost later in the game if you use it all up. That's a good dynamic to have in the game - kind of like forests in vanilla, you have to decide how many to chop to get an early lead, but also leave enough for health and the national park in the end game.

We're certainly planning to make spice a little more valuable, since "spice isn't important enough" is one of the common player feedback messages we get.

What about removing cottages? My first impression was they look out of place in the game, and that'd be a simple way to make spice more important.

It'd also encourage a specialist economy which (to me anyway) seems more in fitting with the theme of the game - small outpost fortress towns with specialised workers rather than sprawling cities of merchants.

Other random idea, what about having city borders pop much quicker? Seeing as borders are more about "how far away you can harvest spice" rather than "cultural influence" - culture doesn't seem to make too much sense in the middle of a desert. :)

Cool, guess I need to play a bit more, I got up to importing units but not resources.

You were almost there! Try building a "Landing Stage" building (national wonder)

t the moment you only really want to harvest the spice that your cities can work as a tile.
Note quite.... your House Spice Corporation building provides commerce for every spice resource you have. This can be a huge benefit!

What about removing cottages? My first impression was they look out of place in the game, and that'd be a simple way to make spice more important.

This would have pretty devastating consequences for game balance, unfortunately. The civ engine is built around working tiles, and the AI only defends cities and a small area around them. The AI would be very vulnerable to human players pillaging all their harvesters, and player commerce would be too dependent on the randomness of whether they got spice blows in their terrotory.


It'd also encourage a specialist economy which (to me anyway) seems more in fitting with the theme of the game

The game is designed to be able to support a powerful specialist economy (check out the Meritocracy and Faufreluches civics), but its more interesting if you can choose between a specialist economy or a cottage economy.

Other random idea, what about having city borders pop much quicker?

Yes, I've been thinking about tweaking this, and we did have something like that at some stage, but it was too much at the high end. David once posted the file for me where the cultural boundaries are controlled, but I lost the link. Maybe if I drop some hints he will post that file name again?

David once posted the file for me where the cultural boundaries are controlled, but I lost the link. Maybe if I drop some hints he will post that file name again?

gameinfo/civ4culturelevelinfo.xml

The game is designed to be able to support a powerful specialist economy (check out the Meritocracy and Faufreluches civics), but its more interesting if you can choose between a specialist economy or a cottage economy.

Yeah, on first glance Mercantilism + specialist bonus civics seem very powerful in the early game due to the short supply of water/pop - that free specialist is even more valuable than in vanilla, and foreign trade routes aren't that great when cities can only grow to 6-8 pop. But that's another issue and I haven't played enough or run any numbers on it.

Yes, I've been thinking about tweaking this, and we did have something like that at some stage, but it was too much at the high end. David once posted the file for me where the cultural boundaries are controlled, but I lost the link. Maybe if I drop some hints he will post that file name again?

I think it's CIV4CultureLevelInfo.xml in GameInfo

Cheers for the other tips!

Thanks!

Let's try this version instead. Halved cultural defense values, added 2 more categories (Potent and Dominant), and tweaked the expansion boundary values downward.

Is there a separate file that looks at the culture value names, that will cause a crash because I added more categories?

Is there a separate file that records the radius of the cultural boundary a city has? Or it just automatically goes up 1 for each new category?

Excel file with old values and new values also included.

Maybe we could try this in the next version?

I have not read every piece of source material on Dune, but I do know from the movies that the spice gives you certain mental abilities. Also somehow spice is what allows instantaneos travel across the universe. It is a powerful, reality-altering substance.

Some suggestions:

- Spend spice to add experience points to units.
- Spend Spice to give units unusual abilities such as teleportation, invisibility, Auto withdrawal of enemy unit... (See the BTS content 'Afterworld' to see what I mean)
- Freeman could start with some odd abilities related to their spice 'infusion'

I think that there should be much more to spice than just cashflow.

-Just my 2 cents :)


<EDIT> from Dune WIKI: (http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Spice_Melange)

Effects on those who consume melange are outlined below:

- Mind altering: it could awaken dormant parts of the human mind and encourage expanded sensory perceptions. In some humans (notably the Bene Gesserit, Guild Navigators, and some members of the Atreides bloodline), heavy doses led to powerful abilities that include prescience;
- Health benefits: taken regularly it increased life expectancy and fortified over all health levels (in many cases life expectancy was tripled);
- Addictiveness: the spice had narcotic properties, thus increasing demand and creating a large and hungry market for it. An individual's addiction to the spice would worsen the more they consumed it.
- Physical effects: sustained use of the spice led to human eyes being discolored so that the entire eye would be stained blue. Extensive exposure to the spice created a huge physical dependency that could radically alter the entire body (see Guild navigators (http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Guild_Navigator)).

We're certainly intending to research some of the other effects of spice, in things like a Prescience Chamber wonder, that gives espionage points for spice.

But I'm not sure that effects on combat units quite make sense. You're never going to be feeding large quantities of spice to large groups of ordinary soldiers, the cost would be extreme. Spice is just too valuable/expensive to distribute to plebs.

Return of the spice thread! Feedback on the 1.7.3 beta:

I am not sure about +3 commerce for a palance per 1 spice resource. I've played 5 or 6 games and didn't try to go an anti-spice route, but I've noticed that with a spice-route you can spam as many cities as you want, because if they grab some more spice, they outpay themselves from the beginning.

Also because it's not :gold: but :commerce:, it means that more spice resources speed up research significally, leaving non-spicers behind.

I think it was not possible to do the same with a "common" economics, and also it means that "polotical" trait (+3 culture/turn) is may be the best trait in the game because your new cities start to bring you spice immediately.

I'm open to switching the palaces producing +3 gold instead of +3 commerce. What do others think?

Wow, have I really made so many typos? I need to sleep more :).

I'm open to switching the palaces producing +3 gold instead of +3 commerce. What do others think?

I can see an argument either way. If we make it give gold, then running 100% science is a meaningful constraint, and even with a ton of spice you still have to actually get beakers elsewhere, from cottages or scientist specialists.

But, making it give gold also messes with how booster buildings (market, bank, library, etc.) work. If it gives commerce, I might run 75% science slider, and get some/moderate benefits from building both gold and beaker boosters in my capital and in all my other cities. If it gives gold, then all I really need to do is build gold boosters in my capital and then beaker boosters everywhere and run 100% science.

I'm not sure which open ends up better.

I see your point, but the current setup makes tech tree too short, and more you settle, faster you research (in opposition to common "bigger empire, lower research rate" which helps to balance Expansion vs Development). I don't have real suggestions about it yet, but it is something to think about.

If you can race through the tech tree too quickly (and I'm not sure that you can, on high difficulty level and Epic speed) then the solution is to increase tech beaker costs, which I'm certainly open to.

The most important thing is to get the balance right between Arrakis Spice and Arrakis Paradise. It used to be that paradise was much stronger, now with the spice silos and other spice buildings, I think Spice might be a bit more powerful.

Reducing the area of spice destroyed by fresh water (to 1 radius not 2) and/or reducing the water penalty cost for catchbasin building are good ways to boost Paradise.

Also:
I find that expanding fast in the early game (before tribunals) still has big city maintenance costs. And the AI does a pretty good job at rapidly expanding anyway. I think the game works fine where all the decent expansion space is taken up pretty quickly, and then you're right into clashing borders and conflict, I don't think that the game is as much fun before that point.

So, I don't see a strategic incentive to REx as a huge design problem.

I don't say that it's a bad design, but with paradise I was unable to research as fast as with spice. It's a thin matter though, maybe some research % from paradise would be enough to "balance" it.

A research bonus doesn't really make much canon/flavor sense. The right way to boost Paradise is to boost the value of terraforming - in particular by reducing the water penalty for catchbasin buildings, because the human player optimally shouldn't build them everywhere, but the AI player does.

The main problem with paradise IMO is the growth hit you take from building the catchbasin.

Yeah, that too. I was unable to run a good specialist economy because of that... While it doesn't make a lot of sense, because in the end that terraformed terrain should give more food than a water in the desert does. Probably bonus yields would help it?

While it doesn't make a lot of sense, because in the end that terraformed terrain should give more food than a water in the desert does.

In the end it gives massively more water, it just takes a while to get going.

Probably bonus yields would help it?
Confused here.
Terraformed terrain gives 1 water, and then 2 water, and sometimes even 3 water with a lake. Vs 0 water from terran.

Also: terraforming is designed to be better for a cottage economy than a specialist economy. Cottages get bonus commerce from fresh water, and you have to actually work tiles in order to get the water yields.
With really large cities you also tend to need Hereditary Rule, which means you can't use Meritocracy.

I find a specialist economy is more effective with spice; you just work the water tiles and bonuses, and use water discipline civic to boost yields (or Mercantilism), and use specialists for all the rest, with Meritocracy and Faufreluches.

* * *

The idea behind the penalty was to model having to save water like the Fremen do in order to start using it later. But we should try it with smaller penalties I think; maybe -1 water for catchbasin and -2 water for reservoir, instead of -3 for both.

Well, as I said, I tried terraforming only once and it was some time ago. I think I should try more before giving any more suggestions :P.