Please put bug reports and general discussion for version 1.6 on this thread. For bug reports, please list the main version and patch version you are using, and attach a save game if possible.

Xfering some discussions from previous threads:

1.
Another question - current protective trait gives CG and Drill to suspensor units. Bc suspensor units are weaker than most of units of same era, and never used as CG, this trait seems to be very weak. Any way to improve it? To add just CG to guardsman units? (w/o drill).

I think we will probably need a general rebalancing/tweaking of leader traits (tying them better to unit classes and buildings and such). And maybe add some new ones?

sure! sounds good
Also we can start brainstorm
@Ahriman, i may be not easy to understand, but i like abstract brainstorming. Being being of arts, the importance of crazy-dune-like brainstorm have been set deep into my mind. :P
But i am not man of numbers/names, more of concepts.

So lets start crazy brainstorm:
Trait for Voice ability : All BG/Paul/Alia/Leto II?



2.

Idea which got transformation through discussion with Ahriman, Lets say tier 4 mine which using Demagog mechanics of ffh, and spawn , if worked, supply truck (soldier of killmorph production rush only mechanic) which can boost production in weaker cities.
That mean, good mine that even have surplus of production so it can export materials to perepherial cities or to front.

3. Idea of giving bonus to Refinery building +1solaris per spice tile in bfc.

I get an instant CTD during map generation, just after i select all the options.

Options were:
Arrakis,
large,
24% land,
irrecgular islands style,
74 degrees outer radius,
bigger polar region,

Civ was house Atreidies, Leto II, Noble difficulty. it crashed during initialization stage.

EDIT: CTD also happens on Tiny maps with the above settings. ill try a game with all the default settings.
EDIT 2: CTD also happens on Tiny with all default settings and Civ as house Atreidies, Leto II, Noble difficulty.
EDIT 3: Game does NOT crash using the archipelago map script, on duel map with Civ as house Atreidies, Leto II, Noble difficulty.

Are you able to get any successful game starts using the arrakis mapscript?

Do you have python logging turned on, and are you getting any python exceptions?

i have tried a few more combinations with the Arrakis mapscript but everything i try results in a CTD. the Archipelago mapscript still works fine though.

i do have Python loggin turned on and no error messages appear. just an instant CTD.

-------------------

when you first build a settler it comes up with a few 'congratualtions! you built your first xxxxx unit! blah blah blah', im sure you know about this though.

I started a game as Bene Geserit (cant remember how to spell it) and a few turns in got the pop up posted below. its something about being able to build the Atreidies spice firm?

another issue i had was loading the auto save from the first turn... [snip]
never mind. i was having a blonde moment and was loading a save from version 1.5 lol. obviously the save was broken.

i have tried a few more combinations with the Arrakis mapscript but everything i try results in a CTD. the Archipelago mapscript still works fine though.

That is disappointing. I have deleted my local install, downloaded the copy from jendaveallen, installed it, and started several games using arrakis. No CTD. I tried your exact settings as well as the defaults and several other combinations. There was one last minute change made to this mapscript; can you try the 0.55 version sent by deliverator at this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8557253&postcount=482)? Make a copy of the arrakis.py mapscript you have, which is version 0.56; then unrar his, which is 0.55 to overwrite it; then try.

when you first build a settler it comes up with a few 'congratualtions! you built your first xxxxx unit! blah blah blah', im sure you know about this though.

You get the same popups when you play vanilla, right? I am told this is related to the "advisor popups" game option.

I started a game as Bene Geserit (cant remember how to spell it) and a few turns in got the pop up posted below. its something about being able to build the Atreidies spice firm?

These are the same messages as the "Congratulations, you have built your first settler". Please try turning off advisor popups in the game options dialog.

EDIT: now trying to load that save causes an instant CTD with a brief flash of python errors. i think its too fast to printscreen the errors though.

Assuming you have logging activated in your civilizationiv.ini file, all python errors are logged into a file, My Documents\My Games\Beyond The Sword\Logs\PythonErr.log. You can look there, instead of trying to speed-read a transient message.

That is disappointing. I have deleted my local install, downloaded the copy from jendaveallen, installed it, and started several games using arrakis. No CTD. I tried your exact settings as well as the defaults and several other combinations. There was one last minute change made to this mapscript; can you try the 0.55 version sent by deliverator at this post? Make a copy of the arrakis.py mapscript you have, which is version 0.56; then unrar his, which is 0.55 to overwrite it; then try.

ok ill try that quickly.

You get the same popups when you play vanilla, right? I am told this is related to the "advisor popups" game option.

not quite. these messages are 'congratualtions you have built your first helicopter/naval/armored/gunpowder ect unit' they also appear if you build a worker.

Assuming you have logging activated in your civilizationiv.ini file, all python errors are logged into a file, My Documents\My Games\Beyond The Sword\Logs\PythonErr.log. You can look there, instead of trying to speed-read a transient message.

not to worry, i figured out what i was wrong :blush: sheer idiocy on my behalf:

another issue i had was loading the auto save from the first turn... [snip]
never mind. i was having a blonde moment and was loading a save from version 1.5 lol. obviously the save was broken.

David, i tried what you suggested.

If i copy all files across (BonusInfos.xml, CvEventManager.py, and Arrakis.py) i get a few errors about Tundra in Bonus Infos.
If i copy only CvEventManager.py and Arrakis.py across i still get a CTD
If i copy only Arrakis.py i still get a CTD.

Hopefully people are able to run the installer successfully now; a corrupted upload at the original server site has been replaced with another server site. One person has reported that the arrakis mapscript is not working, but it is working for the developer (with a fresh download). So we need more people to let us know whether the arrakis mapscript is working or not.

EDIT: FWIW I have installed on another machine which has never had Dune Wars on it before, and I am able to play the arrakis mapscript fine.

Dloading it now, will try it within few minutes.

Very odd, but Arrakis working perfectly for me.
Just randomed game with Rabban.
Arrakis small size Immortal difficulty., default settings.
May be PL have something conflicting. (like i had once with revolts)

There is a mistake for house ecaz within diplo music, it uses ordos music.

I get an instant CTD during map generation, just after i select all the options.


I have that CTD, but only sometimes (maybe 1 out of 10 games).
I would say too, it is caused by the changes I made yesterday. If true, reverting back to deliverator's 0.55 version of arrakis.py should fix it.

hey ,

the ctd is with the arrakis.py map only?

the ctd is with the arrakis.py map only?

Yes, it looks like I have that CTD only with new arrakis.py.

Everything is not right with the Arrakis mapscript anyway, quite apart from the crashing.

Two things which may or may not be related:

1. We have removed the Badlands terrain (TERRAIN_TUNDRA), but there are still a lot of references to this terrain in Arrakis.py.

2. There are a lot of tiny Desert Waste lakes appearing on the 0.6 Arrakis.py - see screenshot. These were certainly not appearing on the 0.55 Arrakis.py - the code to fill in lakes smaller than 10 squares was definitely working so I'm not sure where these extra lakes are coming from. My guess is these tiles could formerly have been Badlands.

Yep, I was right - I stuck TERRAIN_TUNDRA back into Civ4TerrainInfos.xml and the little sand lakes are gone, and the Arrakis map looks much better. So we need to create a version of Arrakis.py which places Rock/Rugged instead of Badlands now that Badlands is not in the mod anymore.

For the record, I did mention this here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8560255&postcount=504).

I started a game as Bene Geserit (cant remember how to spell it) and a few turns in got the pop up posted below. its something about being able to build the Atreidies spice firm?
These are the same messages as the "Congratulations, you have built your first settler". Please try turning off advisor popups in the game options dialog.
not quite. these messages are 'congratualtions you have built your first helicopter/naval/armored/gunpowder ect unit' they also appear if you build a worker.

Just to be clear, all of these messages are the same type of popup; they have "Congratulations!" as the first word. You get these because you have switched on "advisor popups" in the game options screen. You will get the same popups when you play a vanilla game. The only problem with DW is that you get a number of these popups all at once, instead of getting them at different times. I will look into why these all occur at the same time. But the same popups occur in vanilla. Most players switch off advisor popups after their first game.

Everything is not right with the Arrakis mapscript anyway, quite apart from the crashing ... For the record, I did mention this here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8560255&postcount=504).

Clearly, I should stop accepting new change requests a few days before making a major release. I jumped on Ahriman's comment that badlands should no longer be appearing.

Still, I have never seen a crash from this. What is the quickest patch we can make? Although I am not generally in favor, perhaps I should pull down the 1.6 download until we can solve it, and then put it back up. What do you think?

Just release fast patch to fix. Also i dont know i was without religion , so may be i am mistaken, but when i played with former fioles wars accured more, in whole world, now i got quizirate and lone war in world is freeman against ordos. May be something missed? Or did the fact i was without religion saved me?

Although I am not generally in favor, perhaps I should pull down the 1.6
download until we can solve it, and then put it back up. What do you think?

Can you please fix that mentat ai bug, currently it is impossible to test anything after mentats are availabe (because python exception overwrites any regular prints each turn)...

Can you please fix that mentat ai bug, currently it is impossible to test anything after mentats are availabe (because python exception overwrites any regular prints each turn)...

The bug is fixed in 1.6. If you are using 1.5.5, I have given the two character fix in this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8559314&postcount=171).

Everything is not right with the Arrakis mapscript anyway, quite apart from the crashing ... For the record, I did mention this here.

OK, I have discovered what happened. I removed badlands (TERRAIN_TUNDRA) from my local terraininfos and arrakis.py. Then koma sent the updated arrakis.py with the change to remove mesa starts. Of course his file did not have my local change to remove badlands. Then I *wrote over* my file with his. After that I did do testing and I have not seen any crash; but perhaps this is what is wrong in other distributions.

I will remake my changes and upload a fixed arrakis.py. After some confirmation that this is the problem, I will pull down 1.6. I will either update 1.6 and re-release, or perhaps leave 1.6 pulled down and upload 1.6.1. This will avoid confusion among people who may have an "old" 1.6 or a "new" 1.6.

I'm not sure that my issue is causing the crash but...

Here's Arrakis 0.57 - a two line change to place rugged instead of badlands. I have quickly tested and I no longer see any <10 tiles lakes.

It might be worth re-uploading 1.6 with this if others can confirm this fixes the crash. There are still more future 1.6 downloaders than past 1.6 downloaders.

If crashes persist then I suggest we put Cephalo's custom start plot logic from 0.55 back in.

Edit: Looks like you're on it. Removing my file to avoid confusion.

Tundra is only used in about four places in arrakis.py, it only took a couple of minutes to remake the changes. Please find attached version 0.57. I have verified that it is not crashing for me, but then 0.56 wasn't crashing for me either.

Can anybody confirm that 0.57 is "better"? Then I will put it into 1.6.1.

Generated a Tiny, a Small and a Standard map with your 0.57 - all worked fine with no <10 tile lakes. Looks good.

Can anybody confirm that 0.57 is "better"? Then I will put it into 1.6.1.

I would say it is 'better'. I started a few games and hadn't a ctd.

The bug is fixed in 1.6. If you are using 1.5.5, I have given the two character fix in this post.

Great work, david. :goodjob:

oddly but i had no ctds. Till the moment had pretty smooth game, and impressed. Just was beaten by tleilaxu. all seems to work fine, Tleilaxu attacking tactics was awesome. Defencive transports + current ai = nasty. he brought huge stack of rovers to my continent. Covered by !!!!!! Falcon thopters !!!!. Loads of those. My head is beaten i starting new. (it was immortal)
And there is alot of war later in game. They just take their time to build stuff.
also at game have pretty nice balance and depends on leader and case, you make SE/CE choice.
Also quizerate is powerfull, but i got myself to death by bellining it and then converting immidiately.
Also Leto II have very nice synergy with Quizerate. Btw :) ;) (Imp + mainentance, SE based on techmans, build istislah (which is on beeline to quizerate), then pop priest and build Alia's temple - and spread, and spread.
:goodjob:

Barbarians are getting crysknife fighters in the very early game. Intended??? This severely curtails any kind of expansion across islands by thopter in the early game, I lost 2 settlers that way.

David,
I note that the religious building/missionary changes didn't make it into 1.6. Do you disagree that they should be made, or do did you just not get a chance to make them?
Either way, it means I still can't tune religious spread rates and such. Spread of Imperium will be very different if you can't spread it with missionaries until you research the imperium tech than if you can spread it immediately as soon as it spreads to you.

Is your comment that they should not get crysknife fighters at all, or they should not get them so soon? If the first, which are the units they should be allowed? We can easily edit the list of forbidden units for barbs in civilizations/civ4civilizationinfos.xml. In the CIVILIZATION_BARBARIAN section, a number of units are listed like:

<Units>
<Unit>
<UnitClassType>UNITCLASS_WORM</UnitClassType>
<UnitType>NONE</UnitType>
</Unit>


The "NONE" means that the barbarian player may not build any units of this unitclass. As a tangent, this is also how true UU work; there are multiple units of a given unitclass, and the civilization with the UU has the proper unit type listed there.

On the other hand, if you feel the barbarians are getting techs too fast, I am not sure how to solve that. I think that is controlled by some kind of tech "diffusion" where the barbs are always 2-3 techs behind most of the players.

I note that the religious building/missionary changes didn't make it into 1.6. Do you disagree that they should be made, or do did you just not get a chance to make them?

As far as I know, I have made all the changes you requested:

* Changed Great Processor to remove global GP penalty, add +1 beaker per city following the religion, and changed beaker bonus to +25% (AHR45)
* All of the religion temples require the same tech as founding the religion. Even if the religion spreads to you, you must research the tech to build the building.
* Imperial Palace now gives +1 culture per city instead of +1 gold; now gives +1 gold per nobleman (removed from fiefdom) (AHR48)
* Reduced cost of Mahdi Zealot (was Mahdi Fighter) from 40 to 30. It already did not have military support costs, and removing war weariness requires extracting some FFH code (AHR38).
* Increased cost of Qizarate missionary from 40 to 100; it functions as an inquisitor. Eliminated prerequisite building.
* Merged Sayyadinas tech into Faith
* Renamed about 6 religion buildings, renamed Tleilaxu Supremacy religion to Tleilaxu Zensufism


If I missed some, please help me to understand which.

Plantation yields are now very varied.

Base yields are:
4c on incense
1h2c on coffee
3h1c on cereal
2c on dates

And then +2c from sand farms.

So: cereal > incense > coffee > dates. Intended??

If I missed some, please help me to understand which.

I'm sure I made it somewhere; the various missionaries should require the relevant "temple" building to construct. So, no imperial missionary without the feudal estate. No landsraad emissary without the Landsraad outpost. No quizarate missionary without the quizarate temple. no shai-hulad prophet without temple of the maker.

Technocracy probably doesn't need a restriction.

This singificantly slows the lightning spread of imperium.

that fixed the CTD :) nice work :thumbsup:

I'm sure I made it somewhere; the various missionaries should require the relevant "temple" building to construct.

In vanilla, missionaries require monasteries to construct, not temples. We have gradually removed all the monasteries. I assumed that meant that no building would be required to build missionaries. You can easily add this; in units/unitinfos, find the PrereqBuilding field for each UNIT_xxx_ADVOCATE unit and set it to BUILDING_TEMPLE_xxx.

Plantation yields are now very varied ... Base yields are:

I removed 2c from each bonus, and added it back at Sand Farms. You had actually suggested removing 1h2c, but some of them did not have any hammer bonus, and I did not think they should become -1h. I believe deliverator set these yields back in 1.4.x something. Perhaps he can comment on the reasoning. What values do you feel would make sense?

So far i can say there is major improvement of AI at all, here started another immortal game, and now i feel that its not noble by any means. Its challenging, thats good. With more tweaks on tech prioritising and city building it will be good very good. Also changing water yields and rearranging tech tree was good and important change :goodjob:
Early "barb" crysknifers are yes bit too powerfull hovever it adss challenge, and they are avoidable by attaching units to settler in thopter

Base yields are:
4c on incense
1h2c on coffee
3h1c on cereal
2c on dates

There is only a very vague logic to the original values I set. Also, this vague logic was probably screwed up by changing cotton into dates a while back. Since food is more abstract in the mod, the idea was that foodstuff resources (e.g. cereal) would make for stronger healthier workers and hence more production. How about:

2h1c on cereal
2h1c on dates
1h2c on coffee
3c on incense

I know hammers might be more desirable than commerce due to the spice, but some variety would be good. Any other suggestions?

As a tangent, this is also how true UU work; there are multiple units of a given unitclass, and the civilization with the UU has the proper unit type listed there.

I think all the URU (Unique Resource Units such as Crysknife Fighter, Sardaukar) should be treated just like UUs with regards to barbarians i.e. barbarians should not have access to them.

1.How about to make simple unit (remeber, freemen used spears too) with spear (some retextured pikeman perhaps) , as simple str 3 melee unit which will be used by barbarians (instead of CKF), and will have sandrider promo, as resmeblance of not-organised "barbarian" freeman scattered tribes among planet.


2.Also, Protective trait need to be fixed, atm its very weak and useless. Drill/CG for Suspensor craft, weakest era units which never defend cities?
Perhaps CG for Guardsman units? Or speical promotion +10% defecnce strenght for all units?

3. Ordos using scout thopters to transport infiltrators over desert to my land. Not much of them, but, hey! thats cool, i see true ordos in buisness!!! :D they kill buildings in city that struggles with culture over few spice tiles with close, but overland ordos city.

2h1c on cereal
2h1c on dates
1h2c on coffee
3c on incense

This sounds fine. My main point was that the -2c reduction made the variation much more obvious.

barbarians should not have access to them
Barbarian Sardaukar? Yeah, that would be bad....

(remeber, freemen used spears too)
They did? There's no mention of that in the books that I remember.
I don't object to the idea in principle.... but the gameplay effect is to make early game offshore transportation/colonization incredibly risky - especially for the AI. Is that really what we want?

What if the AI loses its settlers in a dash for the polar region? Then that faction is kinda out of the game.

They did? There's no mention of that in the books that I remember.
I don't object to the idea in principle.... but the gameplay effect is to make early game offshore transportation/colonization incredibly risky - especially for the AI. Is that really what we want?

What if the AI loses its settlers in a dash for the polar region? Then that faction is kinda out of the game.

In Lynch movie, they are. :)
They also portrayed with spears/ duo-dents (like picture which koma wanted to cut in art thread)
Game already have content from Emperror and etc. It can be not spears, just yes, idea of UU barbarian units.

Another approach can be like in fhh - barbs and clan of embers, wehre our clan -is freeman faction. So they start in peace with arrakis.

CKF are too powerfull, and yes, 100% agree on settlers and harm to aI

I don't mind having more interestnig barbarian units, but I don't think they should be desert units, because of the threat to scout thopters and the like.

Making Fremen at peace with barbarians would obviate the need for thumper promotion things; the worms just wouldn't attack them (though if at peace, worms also wouldn't pillage their harvesters, unless this is done in python to destroy the rather than with the pillage command - and I think we do want Fremen harvesters to still get pillaged - and maybe Fremen harvesters should have a different graphic, not the big crawlers at all).

CKF are too powerfull

CKF = ???

I figured that out, CKF=Crysknife Fighter, I think Slvynn is agreeing that the Crysknife Fighter is too powerful a unit for the Barbarians.

Yep, confirmed, CKF (Crysknife Fighter) is too powerfull, and some barb uu will be better.

I don't think the Crysknife Fighter is too powerful for Fremen; I think it suits them really well in their raider capacity. It isn't strong enough to take cities defended by infantry, except in really huge hordes, but it can to a great job of an early pillage war.

But yeah, too powerful for barbs to be spawning in the early game.

I don't think the Crysknife Fighter is too powerful for Fremen; I think it suits them really well in their raider capacity. It isn't strong enough to take cities defended by infantry, except in really huge hordes, but it can to a great job of an early pillage war.

But yeah, too powerful for barbs to be spawning in the early game.

I mean for barbs, i wasnt talking about freemen faction :P

Making Fremen at peace with barbarians would obviate the need for thumper promotion things; the worms just wouldn't attack them (though if at peace, worms also wouldn't pillage their harvesters, unless this is done in python to destroy the rather than with the pillage command - and I think we do want Fremen harvesters to still get pillaged - and maybe Fremen harvesters should have a different graphic, not the big crawlers at all).

Sandworm may be Hidden Nationality, so it will be still hostile and thumper will work (remember animals in ffh)
Its also possible to hide that HN promotion.

I don't think the Crysknife Fighter is too powerful for Fremen; I think it suits them really well in their raider capacity. It isn't strong enough to take cities defended by infantry, except in really huge hordes, but it can to a great job of an early pillage war.

But yeah, too powerful for barbs to be spawning in the early game.

We could design a handful of barbarian-only units. The nice thing about doing that is that we can link them to whatever tech we feel like, and so make them come earlier or later.

Maybe a strength 3 or 4 melee warrior with a +25% city attack bonus (and ignore city walls).

Could we get a full list of the units that barbs can get? Expanding this would make them more interesting.

Sandworm may be Hidden Nationality, so it will be still hostile and thumper will work (remember animals in ffh)

No, obviating the need for thumpers would be a design *goal*; peace with barbs would let us do that without thumpers. So no need to make the worms HN.

I don't think the Crysknife Fighter is too powerful for Fremen; I think it suits them really well in their raider capacity. It isn't strong enough to take cities defended by infantry, except in really huge hordes, but it can to a great job of an early pillage war.

But yeah, too powerful for barbs to be spawning in the early game.

We could design a handful of barbarian-only units. The nice thing about doing that is that we can link them to whatever tech we feel like, and so make them come earlier or later.

Maybe a strength 3 or 4 melee warrior with a +25% city attack bonus (and ignore city walls).

Could we get a full list of the units that barbs can get? Expanding this would make them more interesting.
.

Some variety of smuglers unitss, may be Only aviable to barbarians. There also can be guild mercenaries from offworld trade topic, which attack terraformer if he have % terraformed land too hight. Str 3 +25% unit is also sounds good, but is it possible to split barbarian faction? (like it in Fall Further) - They not sit good one with other - Smugglers and Arrakis.


No, obviating the need for thumpers would be a design *goal*; peace with barbs would let us do that without thumpers. So no need to make the worms HN.
Ok :)

I see no gain from splitting barbarians unless we made Fremen be at peace with one of them; the only reason FF uses multiple factions is so various factions can be at peace with some but not all of them.

Its also not an easy change to make. In Warhammer we wanted to expand the number of barbarian factions from 3 to 5 (greenskins, undead, chaos, animals/nature, generic "other"), but it was too hard.

But yeah, too powerful for barbs to be spawning in the early game.

We can only control whether the barb player gets them at all; we cannot allow the barb player to have them but force them to spawn later.

Could we get a full list of the units that barbs can get? Expanding this would make them more interesting.

You can only get a list of the units they *cannot* get; then you have to subtract. Please see civilizationinfos.xml; look for CIVILIZATION_BARBARIAN; look under that for "<Units>". Each of the unitclasses listed there will have a unittype of NONE, which means the barb is not allowed to build units of that type.

No, obviating the need for thumpers would be a design *goal*; peace with barbs would let us do that without thumpers.

Do you really want to link "worms don't attack" with "barbs don't attack"? In particular, there may be Fremen units associated with other civs due to water debt. Those units should still be allowed to use thumpers, right?

hey guys, just for your knowledge,

theres a new option in rev 2.6, barbarian world, from reviews - it makes the barbs more interesting and the game to be more challanger.

soon ill finish the merge though i will leave it invisible, we can test its application for future use.

DV21: The Firefly unit is missing from the unit upgrade path I think. It looks like it should slot in between Wasp and Locust.

Also, is it correct that Grenade Trooper upgrades to Shield Fighter?

We can only control whether the barb player gets them at all; we cannot allow the barb player to have them but force them to spawn later.

I'm aware. But you *could* if you wanted take them away from barbarians, and then create a similar unit that was buildable only by the barbarian player but tie it to a later tech.
Which would have the same effect.

You can only get a list of the units they *cannot* get

Fine, same thing, I will take a look at some point. Is there a distinction between which units they can build in their cities, and which units they can spawn in fog of war?

Do you really want to link "worms don't attack" with "barbs don't attack"?

No, not particularly, but *if* you wanted to make it so that Fremen were immune to normal barbarians (which was the proposal) then I would say you shouldn't try to *undo* that by making them vulnerable to worms (by making the worms hidden nationality).
It would be very weird if Fremen were at peace with on-land barbarian smugglers, but could still be attacked by sandworms.
I don't see a strong need to make Fremen at peace with on-land barbarians, so that leaves you free to use Thumpers to effect their interaction with Worms.

barbarian world
Doesn't the barbarian world option normally start the game with barbarian cities?

We should think in general about the role of barbarians and how important they should be. I definitely don't think we should go as far as Fall Further, where barbarians are very powerful and often wipe out AIs, or hamper their growth, making the AIs a pushover. Powerful non-House/state actors don't make that much sense in a Dune setting I think.
Its not like smugglers/"feral" Fremen really pose much of a military threat to anyone.

But it would be nice if barbs were enough to at least hamper initial expansion. We could also think of the barbs as the Houses Minor, gradually getting eaten up by the Majors.

DV21: The Firefly unit is missing from the unit upgrade path I think. It looks like it should slot in between Wasp and Locust.

Fighters and bombers should upgrade differently. I forget the names, but I think we have 3 fighters, a bomber and a stealth bomber?
IIRC the Wasp and Locust are both fighters; the Firefly is a bomber. So we should not have wasp -> firefly or firefly -> locust.

Also, is it correct that Grenade Trooper upgrades to Shield Fighter?

No, it should upgrade to a heavy trooper.

Been playing so far i like it very much. Barbs not big threat, but yes they need some uu. Unit that exist but none of major civs can build it, and its not in list of disable units for barbs.

I tryed to play so far, and developed huge infrastructure, and was surprised (to my joy) that big economy dont mean that all is cool. 2 times i was wiped by very smart AI which just came and killed me, being tech inferriror. Feyd declared at Pleased, and took my undefended city in middle of empire. If you sprawl - know how defend it. I like it very much.
Only yes, as mentioned in other thread, i find terraforming and paradise too powerfull and arrakis spice too weak.

Also, is it correct that Grenade Trooper upgrades to Shield Fighter?

Sigh. It upgrades to shock trooper, which has a rifle.

Here i am , thinking new ideas again. Harkonenn have too much slaves. I'd say those slaves are useless in those amounts, and thats all special what Harkonnen have. They lack some "berry", which is .... HEARTPLUG.

I propose to implement some new icon - ability for Slave unit, equal to disband, but it will give hapiness in city for 2-3-4-5 turns depends on speed. Slight boost but will allow to Harkonen player to be true harrkonen and use heart plugs. Bring slave to city and pull the heartplug and give your city +4 turns of +1 happy on epic speed.
I'll will make a button, should i?

humm..how about - if the slaves will die after a certain amount of turns?....?

humm..how about - if the slaves will die after a certain amount of turns?....?

nono then even worse - Harkonen special feature is weak atm. If you captured workers you need not slaves. All civs special features are much stronger than ability to create slaves, bc in midgame they are useless.
What i proposing is to add funny feature - pulling the heartplug, very important feature of harkonnen in books. Simply dying slaves is boring thing compared to ability to pull it out .

Just send him to work and die or sacrifice for small and short hapinnes boost in city.

interesting i must say,

though what i suggest is that slaves will die after a while,
then it means that you need to get more slaves by attacking more, this way - you wont over populate your self with too much slaves and have tons of them.

further more, we can perhaps make 2 options for harkonen - fighter slaves and worker slaves,
50% for each, this way the harkonen ability will be better since theyll get some fighting units everynow and then, that will die after a while.

just a thought.

i also like the heartplug :)



edit:
oh and dune wars 1.6.2 released.

They lack some "berry", which is .... HEARTPLUG
very important feature of harkonnen in books

Noooooo.....
This is not Dune. This is a stupid invention of the movie - one of the main reasons that people scorn the movie.
It *never* appears in the books.

bc in midgame they are useless
No they aren't. In midgame they are great for rapidly building expensive time-consuming improvements, like deep wells, deep mines and level 2 turbines.

though what i suggest is that slaves will die after a while,
They die when they finish building an improvement. Maknig them die before then would make them too weak.

fighter slaves
Harkonnens would never trust slaves enough to give them weapons and use them in their army. The only slaves that ever get weapons are mostly for show, in the gladitorial arenas where they get killed, or for "sport" when they hunt them.

My suggestion for slaves:
a) Drop the capture probability to 50% for Harkonnen (from 100%)
b) Have the slavery civic give a +20% slave capture chance
c) Give slaves 2 movement points
d) Allow slaves to cross desert tiles, same as workers.
e) Have captured slaves spawn either outside enemy cultural borders, inside friendly cultural borders, in the closest friendly city, or in the capital city.
f) Maybe: allow slaves to be sacrificed in cities for a very small one-shot hammer bonus.

hi again:

i think there's two bugs with the homeworld screen:

1. theres no sound during the movie of the navigator - thought theres a sequance sound file.

2. when your short on money, and you try to order in a unit - when i pressed on the transport button, it says "select at least one unit"
i think it should say - "insignificant solaris" , for some reason when i did this 450 turns into the game - it crashed the game.



**ahriman,

good ideas you got there.

and yeah, heart plug is form david lynch only...

Yep but game contain already aloooot of stuff from emperror, however....

MAin point that yes Slaves are too weak. Ahriman, i played alot of games already, and when i have 10+ workers slaves are useless, esp that they can not cross desert . Compare it to Ordos infiltrators, To other civs special abilities. Slaves are weak, and yes , having 10 workers is very easy espessialy if you capture some. I wont say this just because i desire to implement something, but because i playing civ well (well i beat emperror level easilly in vanilla/bts), and now kicking it in DW on immortal with no problems. Slaves are useless, with current mechanics. They cant build harvesters, and you anyways want alot of workers for harvesting puproses.

I like that idea with the heartplug.
So if ahriman can't think of a better reason to reject it, I would like to add it.
Svlynn, do you think you can make a button graphic?

theres no sound during the movie of the navigator - thought theres a sequance sound file.

Sure? Last time I tried, it was working.

2. when your short on money, and you try to order in a unit - when i pressed on the transport button, it says "select at least one unit"
i think it should say - "insignificant solaris" , for some reason when i did this 450 turns into the game - it crashed the game.

Well, it says "select at least one unit" because you haven't selected a unit :) (it doesn't look for the reason why you haven't select an unit).
I can improve that.

What i proposing is to add funny feature - pulling the heartplug, very important feature of harkonnen in books.

You should read the books, it will help you separate what is truly Dune from what is David Lynch (heartplugs, weirding modules, spontaneous nosebleeds, etc). This mod is seeking to be true to the Frank Herbert books first, although we are drawing some content from other sources e.g. Westwood games, prequels.

hummm,
ok koma13,

can you check out the 1.6.2? and perhaps find the problem?

i think i tested 1.6 as well and there was no sound, cant remmber.


anyway - i had a crash during game with the ordos - perhaps an art thing, dont know yet, got no python error.

I can add button without any problem

and i was reading alot of SF in my childhood, including Dune and much more, and it was alot of time ago as i read that, then i watched movie (few times) , and played Dune related games. I didnt read book recently, yes. And you know perhaps its mixed in my head. Like 1 plot jumping on another one. I till last moment was sure that heartplug was in book, perhaps too much time passed. I didnt read all the books, few of them and i ordered ones i didnt for sure, I simply will like to read them in my mother language, which is not common in country i living in.

Game have plenty of features which are not-cannon, and gameplay wise - Harkonnen need some feature. There is nothing in books like instant production bonus for slave, as well as there is Harkonnen brutality and sadism and twisted . There are already Ordos, and many many things that add nice things to gameplay but are not cannon.

here is nothing in books like instant production bonus for slave, as well as there is Harkonnen brutality and sadism and twisted . There are already Ordos, and many many things that add nice things to gameplay but are not cannon.

Well, you could sacrifice them in a fighting arena. But I still prefer the idea with the heart plug. :)

can you check out the 1.6.2? and perhaps find the problem?
i think i tested 1.6 as well and there was no sound, cant remmber.
Yes, I will check it. The sound is a little melodic, often mixed into the background music. Maybe you just haven't noticed it?


anyway - i had a crash during game with the ordos - perhaps an art thing, dont know yet, got no python error.
When pressing the transport button?

I really hate the heartplug idea. It's one of the most un-Dunish aspects of the film.

We have discussed in the past that Slaves could be sacrificed in gladiatorial combat in the arena for some bonus which I think is much more Dunish idea. I'll quote from david's original plans for the Harkonnen slaves.

Harkonnan slaves. Whenever a Harkonnan unit wins a combat, there is a 75% chance it will create a slave. The slave is a fast worker which can build any improvement, but it dies when the improvement is finished. In the future we may change this so that it can be killed in a city to give a hammer bonus (worked to death in the factories), or an XP bonus (dies in the arena).

I would like to see both the work to death in the factory and kill in the arena uses implemented.

But please, no heartplugs.

I really hate the heartplug idea. It's one of the most un-Dunish aspects of the film.

We have discussed in the past that Slaves could be sacrificed in gladiatorial combat in the arena for some bonus which I think is much more Dunish idea. I'll quote from david's original plans for the Harkonnen slaves.



I would like to see both the work to death in the factory and kill in the arena uses implemented.

But please, no heartplugs.

Sure sure, no intention to break alreayd decent job done by You, ahriman, david and team. No intentions. I was simply saying that Harkonnen need their slaves being taken to other level of usefulness. More interesting mechanics, more buffs. Really, they even cant enter desert.

many many things that add nice things to gameplay but are not cannon.

This is true, but I think it is one of the unique and attractive aspects of the mod that we are trying to be truer to the books. I'm fine with adding stuff from other sources and have done, but the books are still the richest and best source of inspiration in my opinion. I'm not saying we should have only canon stuff at all, it's just that the books should be the primary inspiration.

MAin point that yes Slaves are too weak.

Slaves serve a useful purpose; they don't have to be incredibly powerful. Adn they do not need to be the *only* Harkonnen feature. It sounds like what you're really saying is "slaves are underpowered if they are the only Harkonnen feature". But this doesn't need to be the case. If we ever get into some civ-specific spy missions, I could imagine a "Traitor" mission that instantly bombs a cities defenses down to zero (they build up again normally, but if you use it just before an assault....).
We could also re-adapt the Atreides unit-spawn. I think weak conscripted levy troops in high quantity would be very Harkonnen.
(Maybe the troops could appear with a "conscript" promotion that gave a -10% strength penalty?)

And besidse, the early game boost they give you can be very large, so that is still valuable even if you don't use them much in the lategame.

And did you even read my proposal? You're complaining about things (like no desert access) that my propsal would remove. It would also reduce the total number of slaves.
Also, what game speed are you playing? At Epic speed advanced improvements take a long time to build.

Heartplugs are also just stupid, as well as un-canon. If you want to kill someone, stab them or shoot them. Don't build some kind of device into their heart.

I'd have no problem with sacrificing the slave for say 15 turns of +1 happy.
Can the AI evaluate the benefit of that though?

Yep i saw what you posted, and thats seems fine , i like also Deliverators ideas on arena. Hapiness just seems to be more apporiate way of boosting than insant hammers (well, slave is not made from metal/minerals, isnt it), but brutal Harks will be happy to see someone dying violently.
Also, you said that , they need to gain acess to desert. Best puprose for them is building harvesters, game mechanic wise, because you dont care if one die suddenly to worm, and building harvesters might be tricky and big job.

I paying Epic always, and its not problem. I have big amount of workers because: i capture them, because i build them alot when i have surplus of food but nothing to build (before i tech protected trade to build wealth), i build them alot to make fast harvesters with multiple workers before worm even get close to my harvesters (this way you make it fast and not bring attention of worm to harvs). So workers cant be replaced with slaves. Having alot of workers is not a problem in game. And numerous slaves are just useless, providing very minor bonus which surely makes no change to my empire well-faring.

(well, slave is not made from metal/minerals, isnt it),

You're working them to death in a labor camp. Hammers aren't just materials, they are output.

but brutal Harks will be happy to see someone dying violently

Keep in mind; the Harkonnens are like the ruling royal family. While their predilictions influence their officers and the other senior officials, the basic masses under their rule are just people.
Most of the people on Giedi Prime aren't Harkonnens.

Yep sure, i have no intentions to question ways of implementation. Lets focus on major point. Harks need something for sure.
I simply liked less hammer bonus because it can be exploted by human player , though it seem to be viable too, i am talking about wonders, good warmonering Harkonnen will be able to build wonders better than any Industrial guy.

I simply liked less hammer bonus because it can be exploted by human player

How can a human exploit it differently from the AI? Other than by knowing to send the slaves to low production cities?
If its only like 10 hammers per slave, its not really going to help you build wonders much.
The AI can use them to build wonders too.

How can a human exploit it differently from the AI? Other than by knowing to send the slaves to low production cities?
If its only like 10 hammers per slave, its not really going to help you build wonders much.
The AI can use them to build wonders too.

Well depends what amount of hammers , but yes 10 wil not do much difference. So far i agree with that your changes will fix situation. I mean allowing them to travel on desert, lessen their numbers (not 100%, 100% seems to be unrealistic, some freedom loving freeman will fight till death but never allow submission of themselves to being HArkonnen slaves), and adding hammer function.)

I know I'm being a little ridiculous here, but just for reference:

1) Fremen. Not Freeman.
2) Cannon and canon are different words in English. Cannon is like the weapon. Canon means doctrinal, or official.

/end pedantry

Also, another thing - Stillsuit promo can be taken before Stillsuit technology is researched. It seems to be odd and not "right".

Mortar have sound of catapult.

as for your last post - no problems, i am not strict with things i am typing , and i making alot of typos and mistakes (i am not native english speaker) , but thanks for your effort to make it better.

Yeah, the stillsuit promotions needs to be reconsidered. +1 movement is just wrong for stillsuits too. It should probably be something like desert combat strength.

Maybe this would solve one of our issues (land units getting the desert combat promotion despite being unable to enter desert):
i) Make the normal desert combat promotion available only to suspensors and thopters
ii) Have stillsuits be the same as the desert combat promotion (+20% strength in desert and deep desert) but only availble to melee and guardsmen units, and require the sandrider promotion, so it is only availble to units that can enter and fight in deserts.

I like before how we had a Fremen Sietch building that gave stillsuits for free to units built there - maybe a Fremen national wonder?

Yeah, the stillsuit promotions needs to be reconsidered. +1 movement is just wrong for stillsuits too. It should probably be something like desert combat strength.

Maybe this would solve one of our issues (land units getting the desert combat promotion despite being unable to enter desert):
i) Make the normal desert combat promotion available only to suspensors and thopters
ii) Have stillsuits be the same as the desert combat promotion (+20% strength in desert and deep desert) but only availble to melee and guardsmen units, and require the sandrider promotion, so it is only availble to units that can enter and fight in deserts.

I like before how we had a Fremen Sietch building that gave stillsuits for free to units built there - maybe a Fremen national wonder?
How about Stillsuit promo will act as old sandrider for units that normally cant enter to desert, so they will be able to enter a desert (hey thats seems canon right!)?
and all units of Fremen will start with Stillsuit and sandrider, When sandrider will be +25% defence (hey he is on worm, its hard to hit THAT!) and double movement in desert.

Summary:
Stillsuit : can enter desert.
Sandrider - double movement in desert, +25 defence. (may be not double , just +1, but all guards/melees are 1 movement, so difference will be only with Homeland promotion)

Its much better if non-Fremen units can't enter deserts. It causes all kinds of AI issues.

AI for Fremen is already very bad; we will have to create a new AI to deal with their inability to use infantry and settlers in deserts well. It will probably be easier if the existing factions use the current AI and then have a tweaked AI for Fremen.

Fremen would be much less unique as a a faction (and thopters and suspensors woudl be much less balanced) if any infantry unit could enter deserts with a single promotion.

When sandrider will be +25% defence
I don't really like this; when in deserts they can only be attacked by thopters and suspensor gunships; they *should* be vulnerable to these and other ranged weapons. No shields on Fremen, so thopter weapons can just chew them up.

Found another issue:
Been playing as Tleilaxu and kicking it on immortal.
At some beelined Genetic Manipulation. When researched - it gave me to choose religion (Oo) i took Technocracy, and it got founded in my city!! :( There also in tech tree BTl religion marked in Genetic Manipulation. So, perhaps it is last there from previous religious system, but need to be removed, bc i just founded Technocracy as BTl at Genetic Manipulation

Ah and i think it was reported somewhere but Misille Launcher creates CTD on combat.

Ah and i think it was reported somewhere but Misille Launcher creates CTD on combat.

I've already fixed this locally. I'll put out an XML patch at some point on the weekend.

oh perhaps this is the ctd i had in 1.6.2....sweet.


ive played a few turns in the latest - is it me or theres really a lot of units?

also:
quad can go on mesa, desptire its not suppose to...

The mercenary pool isn't refreshing - and units in it aren't upgrading either. 1.6.1

The mercenary pool isn't refreshing - and units in it aren't upgrading either. 1.6.1

Thx, it is already fixed in 1.6.2.

I am new to this mod, so this might be an intended feature (if a rather odd one), but I just tried a game as Alia of the Atreides, sent a small stack to attack the Harkonnens (4 Infantry 3 Soldier). The stack got attacked by a Quad that killed a defending Infantry. Up to this point, no biggie.

However, the rest of the stack got transported outside Harkonnen territory. This was particularly annoying because I had to pass past the city with the Quad to get to his weaker cities. I did not experience it the next times I was attacked by Quads, though.

Also, I second that barb Crysknifers spawn way too fast. I think this is because the tech (which, as you said, dissipates to barbs when players have it) is fairly early, but the players need the Water Debt ressource to get the unit, whilst the barbs pretty much ignore ressource demands. The 2-move 4-strength units are a wicked annoyance since you have to guard Workers/Settlers with two Infantry units as soon as you can get infantries.

I don't think the solution is removing the barb opportunity to get crysknifers, though, since I imagine it would be one of the most natural units to be roaming around dune's surface (Fremen rogues?), but perhaps you could do something else... :p

Back to playing. I finished the book today, and now it's time to conquer Dune. Remember, he who controls Spice, controls space.

All this on 1.6.1 btw.

quad can go on mesa, desptire its not suppose to...

I noticed this aswell, 1.6.1

Uh... I now get a CTD when initiating XML (uncached), despite having gotten the game to work earlier, same patch, 1.6.1...?

Uh... I now get a CTD when initiating XML (uncached), despite having gotten the game to work earlier, same patch, 1.6.1...?

Reinstalling allowed me to start the Mod again, but I could imagine it would be unable to start if I close it, repeating this issue.

Diamondeye, hi and welcome,

can you try out - version 1.6.2?

Don't know if this is a bug or just one of those things that can't be helped.

I notice that when spice disappears, the created spice crawler stays. Shouldn't it be 'destroyed' when there isn't any more spice?

Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't be better to have a specialty worker to represent spice crawlers. That way you could only afford a few of them (Having 10+ spice crawlers would start being expensive in the units sort of way) and make them incredibly valuable. I mean now when a worm 'eats' my crawlers, it's no big thing; just wait till it goes away and send the workers back out. In the book and movie, they point out that losing a crawler (or worse the miners) was a big deal and that cost is what made mining spice so costly.

Not to mention capturing enemy crawlers would be a win-win scenario.

Well, i took a rest this weekend ,and apart from spending time with gf and learing new things about blender, i played few short games.
All epics, Small to Tiny maps.
Last one i played (started to play) was Deity level.
Well..... there is alot of wars and AI builds good stacks. AI know how to transport things. But!!!
Please , its very important, chek by uself because it ruins challenge and AI goodness :
AI dont know to defend in DW. There alot of units with hight movement that can strike in 1 turn from afar (homeland promotion/quads). When you playing you should leave equal (almost) amount of city defences in cities, because its much easier to reach inside core of enemy in DW than to do that in vanilla. Ai knows to attack, but when it comes to defence:
1. It leavs pity amount of units to defend own cities. Last game (Diety) i rushed Ecaz, and after i got his capital i made peace, because he stacked alot of soldiers in his 2nd city. 10 turns started, and my culture from his ex-capital grown to 2 tile bfc. I was on 2 tiles from my culture to his last city. He had 5 soldiers, which he sent wondering /defending some workers. The thing is pretty stupid that he left 2 scout thopers with 1 soldier to defend capital. He was killed from game next turn.
My suggestion that AI should prioritise defence . Its very important and tricky , and will make AI much more challengeable if he will know how to defend. AI should not send most of his Guardsman units to wonder/defend tiles, when enemies have hight power ration and have armies near. More than that Scout thopters are not good units to defend city. If AI is not on attack mode he should keep most of his units stationed in city, includinng start stage of game.
2. I was fighting Emperror, and massing forces to attack ghis city , but defences were incredible and very tough. I moved 1 tile northern to other city, and he did very stupid thing - he got all that crazy harrison of 1st city and went to attack my one. He left 4 units and got powned, i took city in 2 turns. Thats bad for aI, he should not send hios guardsman units stack to attack enemy well defended city when enemy have major stack on his land.

So far, those my deep insight things i found while my testing runs. I hope that helps, and those holes in AI performance can be fixed.

:)

There is a small patch for Dune Wars 1.6.1 available here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8578535&postcount=558). This will fix the Missile Launcher crash amongst other things.

Diamondeye, hi and welcome,

can you try out - version 1.6.2?

I would love to if it was anywhere to be found. The link in the Welcome thread still links 1.6.1

And I was right concerning the startup-CTD. I just tried to start the game up again and got a CTD during the init XML (uncached) phase. Opening the mod from BtS produces the same result.

Uh... I now get a CTD when initiating XML (uncached), despite having gotten the game to work earlier, same patch, 1.6.1...?

Just found out what was wrong; Vista.

Right-clicking and using "Run as Administrator" works fine.

That's good to know. I've added the administrator/Vista thing to the list of Known Issues in the Installation thread.

All epics, Small to Tiny maps.

Slynn, try playing Standard maps. The mod is not really aimed at being balanced for tiny maps.
The early wars that you complain about are not nearly such an issue on standard sized maps.

If we forced the AI to prioritize defense, that would inevitably come at the cost of growth, which would weaken the AIs on standard maps.

Slynn, try playing Standard maps. The mod is not really aimed at being balanced for tiny maps.
The early wars that you complain about are not nearly such an issue on standard sized maps.

If we forced the AI to prioritize defense, that would inevitably come at the cost of growth, which would weaken the AIs on standard maps.

Not prioritize but rewiev it.
The point that :
1. AI send wondering units and leaves poor defences.
2. Sending stacks to attack when enemy at the gates.
3. Not using well terrain.
4. Do not attack at good times for him. (Check incremental patch discussion thread)
Thats dont matter what size of map being played. Its just overall issues.
And i played standard maps which are quite well balanced with older patches, but those problems will exist there too.

Also Tiny maps is part of game, and there should be way to improve gameplay on tiny maps too. Again - tactics should be rewieved, as well more even spread for defences. Its not vanilla, and i explained alot in incremental discussion thread too.

Also personal tip : I appreciate job you doing , mod, really awesome :goodjob:, but if someone mentions something that does not mean his review should be cut off because of 1 number of 1 string that seems to you being wrong. Thopter Defence isnt good, and Sending stacks of guardsman units to attack when enemy have major offencive stack at your land, and enemy cities are well defended and visible - thats isnt good idea for AI as well. You didnt reviewed problems i posting about, and thats deep insight things i aimed to find in my testing runs. I am trying to help, you know, and thats cool that most of thuings being denyed, thats a way of work, trying, failing , making better then. And... *sigh* i am not that stupid, At least i won BtS on immortal once and win it always on emperror :P So please dont deny my whole post, by denying something unrelevant and passing rest.
I know, i can be hard too, sorry mate.

I have not doubt i can win Deity game Easilly with small map (Yep after few mistakes i found some critical things that i need to put attention on- and they differ from vanilla) . Thats should not be so, and thats thing i am trying to fix. Long lasting challenge - long lasting time of love of gamer to the game. I just making plain reports, in order to give you information, that using it AI python codemasters can improve things. Hope it didnt offended you.

DV22 (? lost count again)
The Ecaz diplo music is a bit screwed up. Ordos for Ancient era and Russian for the rest. I've attached the amended XML file.

DV23 - Just started a game as Corrino and I start with 2 scout thopters, a soldier and a settler. This seems a bit unfair compared with other civs that start with 2 soldiers and a settler. Can we just standardized it for everyone apart from the Fremen, so that everyone gets a settler, a soldier and a scout thopter.

Is it just me of do Atreides ALWAYS get first place by MILES in every game? my last game they had more than double my points and i was in a comfortable second place. they had vassalised 2 other civs (Ordos and Corrino)

Can we just standardized it for everyone apart from the Fremen, so that everyone gets a settler, a soldier and a scout thopter.

This sounds fine to me. And Fremen get settler, soldier, scout.

Is it just me of do Atreides ALWAYS get first place by MILES in every game?

I hadn't really noticed this. Only things that could really cause this are:
a) Older versions had free units for Atreides, which were a big deal in boosting them
b) Financial trait is very powerful, so is philosophical with a specialist economy
c) Potentially just their AI's happen to be more efficient? Though they are quite different; Alia is very aggressive and intolerant, paul is aggressive and likable, Duke Leto is friendly and likable, Leto II is imperialistic.
d) Terraforming is favored by Atreides, and is probably still too powerful atm (probably needs rates slowed down - are they adjusted for game speed??). This is likely to be the main cause. Fremen (who also favor Arrakis paradise civic) aren't as powerful because they're currently handicapped by their inability to expand well early game across deserts (AI doesn't understand that settlers can cross desert, and they don't have scout thopterS).

Okay, some real feedback:

AI:
-Ordos AI is very poor. I have experienced several times where it DoWs after I've attacked one of its friends, without taking the war serious. I've killed Ordos in what seemed like a dogpile-move against me several times. Also, it seems very reluctant to expand.
-It is very difficult to get Liet-Kynes to pleased in any sort of time-frame that would make Fremen Water Debt usable (Crysknifers, primarily?).

Ressources:
-Spice is not nearly important enough. It needs a buff, considering its value lorewise (or else, I just don't get what it does? Is the +1:commerce: stackable, and does it work in every city?)
-Crystal is too rare.
-Nitrates (or rather, Rocket guys from Nitrate) is a extremely viable early rush tactic - overpowered?

Misc:
-There is too large a distance in the tech tree from Sopho (Offworld trade) to Mentats.

Thanks for the feedback.

-Ordos AI is very poor. I have experienced several times where it DoWs after I've attacked one of its friends, without taking the war serious. I've killed Ordos in what seemed like a dogpile-move against me several times. Also, it seems very reluctant to expand.

The Ordos AIs are not particularly aggressive in starting wars (though the Executrix is more aggressive than Roma). They are mercenary and opportunistic; they are easily bribed into a war and will start dogpile wars. I see this as very in character. Ordos prefer to stay at peace and use espionage, or be paid to fight.
I would be very surprised if they are reluctant to expand in terms of building settlers. I have not observed this, and there aren't really any AI personality factors that would lead to this.
Ordos are generally also weak atm because they lack UUs and powerful mechanics, we haven't really put them in yet.

It is very difficult to get Liet-Kynes to pleased in any sort of time-frame that would make Fremen Water Debt usable (Crysknifers, primarily?).

Fremen are generally standoffish and slow to trust outsiders, so it isn't easy to convince them to trade with you. I think this is in-character.
The *primary* benefits from Fremen Water Debt are the late-game Naib's Chosen/Wormrider and Fedaykin units. So you definitely aren't missing out on benefits of having good relations with Fremen.
It shouldn't be easy for non-Fremen to be fielding crysknife fighters in the early game.

-There is too large a distance in the tech tree from Sopho (Offworld trade) to Mentats.
I don't really see this as a major problem, but maybe we could give Sapho a small benefit in the early game?

It is very difficult to get Liet-Kynes to pleased in any sort of time-frame that would make Fremen Water Debt usable (Crysknifers, primarily?)

Fremen Water Debt also allows you to build the Worm Rider/Naib's Chosen unit and Fedaykin which is one of the best Melee fighters in the game.

Spice is not nearly important enough. It needs a buff, considering its value lorewise (or else, I just don't get what it does? Is the +1 stackable, and does it work in every city?)

You're not the first to say this. See the debate here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=337290). There are some ideas and plans around about expanding the role of spice. Also, it is possible to make very substantial income from the spice in the current mod.

It needs a buff, considering its value lorewise (or else, I just don't get what it does? Is the +1 stackable, and does it work in every city?)

The main benefit from spice comes from the house spice corporation. Build this in your capital, it generates very large commerce yields. I have had games where this is giving 130+ commerce, which can mean hundreds of beakers or gold per turn.

We need to advertise this effect better; maybe in one of the Sid's Tips messages?

Ok, I didn't know about the lategame Fremen water debt thingies, thanks for correcting me there.

@Spice: I have noticed the Spice Firm effect and I must say it seems almost neglicable until 10+ spice sources. On all maps of standard size or more, 10 spice pools means you're dominating already.

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).

On all maps of standard size or more, 10 spice pools means you're dominating already.

The mod isn't really well designed for small maps. Try a standard size map; 10 spice is easily achievable pretty early without being one of the dominant powers.
And you can easily have 30+ spice by the midgame and often 40+ by lategame in a standard area, without that meaning that you are dominating.
And with all the multipliers you can get in one city (academy, library, university = +100% beakers) that is a huge income.
Spice industry civic helps a lot too because it radically reduces the chance of spice resources running out.


This makes rush for a single spice source for the coorp and then ignoring spice (living inland this is often sound) can be viable

I don't think it takes 4-5 spice to break even. The marginal gains from spice are always larger than the maintenance cost. The +5 gold doesn't go away if you have 1-2 spice resources.
I don't think its true that you're better off with 0 spice than with 3 spice.

From my latest Harkonnen game:

I get 183 commerce from spice resources (and pay 7 gold in maintenance), which constitutes ~1/3 of my total commerce income (running a specialist economy under Meritocracy/Faufreluches/Arrakis Spice).

Thats pretty huge.

Spice is pretty cool and powerfull, i think it may need some more building, some slight boost but be more rare, and, sure, Arrakis Spice civin need boost because atm Paradise powns, Terraforming is easy victory to achieve, not enough punishment. There was final proposition of Ahriman that Guild will intervene if % of terraformed land is too hight and will stop trade via offworld trading.

The mod isn't really well designed for small maps. Try a standard size map; 10 spice is easily achievable pretty early without being one of the dominant powers.
And you can easily have 30+ spice by the midgame and often 40+ by lategame in a standard area, without that meaning that you are dominating.
And with all the multipliers you can get in one city (academy, library, university = +100% beakers) that is a huge income.
Spice industry civic helps a lot too because it radically reduces the chance of spice resources running out.

Good points, especially the ones about Spice running out. But I refuse to believe you are not dominating on a standard map with 30-40 Spice. I've played standard a couple of times and realized, when I had about 10-15 spice, that the rest of the game would be steamrolling AIs (I am taking them on two at a time without losing ground at all). This is with the Ix leader, mind you, nothing warmongerish at all.

I don't think it takes 4-5 spice to break even. The marginal gains from spice are always larger than the maintenance cost. The +5 gold doesn't go away if you have 1-2 spice resources.
I don't think its true that you're better off with 0 spice than with 3 spice.

That's not what I said. I said the 5 gold evens out the maintenance. That means:
0 spice: 5 gold (no maintenance for passive coorp!)
1 spice: 3 commerce (the gold is now used for maintenance)
2 spice: 6 commerce
3 spice: 9 commerce
etc...

So when faced with only 2-3 spice pools (that could extinguish or be pillaged by worms) when you already have the firm, early game where there are few multipliers, it's almost useless. What my point was is that it should NEVER be useless to harvest spice, because, if it wasn't for spice, the planet would be a backwater nothingness.

That said, I have only just started playing the mod, so I might lack some challenging late-game situations.

I won few games just because spice (sure it would be easier game if i was going to Paradise, but only in terms of time) . there are plently synergies in game that can boost your spice income by crazy amounts. SE of DW is quite powerfull, there are plently of civics that boost specialists, Landsraad religion, alot of traderoutes and very hight food is also possible in certain cities. Tripling your tech rate just because spice - that sounds normal to me, and that trippled tech rate (even temporary, but hey there are some respawns of spice can happen too) - is great gain.

The point that things are not bad , not that bad as you tell us, not bad at all, i'd say. Yep, as i feel it need some slight boost , some more mechanics involved perhaps, because of reasons i mentioned already, but overall - Spice is important and vital in this game, and provides power. (Be carefull though if you have powerfull Atriedes/Freemen around, they will DoW you soon enough.

But I refuse to believe you are not dominating on a standard map with 30-40 Spice

*shrug* It happens. The only thing that determines your spice access is your terrain, time and some luck.
You don't need that much terrain to control 30+ spice resources. You can easily get that by late-midgame controlling only say 1/7 of the world's land.

But you're also digging yourself into a circular argument:
"Spice isn't powerful enough, because if you have lots of spice then you are winning."

Why do you think you managed to be winning? Because you had a big spice income.

I'm not sure exactly how corporation maintenance works; it can be a complex formula.

But it certainly doesn't seem to be -5; it seems to me to be -3 gold. (Note: gold penalties are post-city boosters like banks and libraries, commerce boosts are pre-boost).

So:
0 spice = +5 gold
1 spice = +3 commerce, +(5-3=2) gold.
2 spice = +6 commerce, +2 gold
3 spice = +9 commerce, +2 gold

So when faced with only 2-3 spice pools (that could extinguish or be pillaged by worms) when you already have the firm, early game where there are few multipliers, it's almost useless.


And in any case, if you only have 2-3 spice then you are either:
a) in the very early game
b) using Arrakis paradise civic (which severely limits the amount of spice you can pull in)
c) incredibly unlucky with spice blows and spice resource deletion
d) failing to build cities near the coast or build cultural buildings to expand your terrain.

And can you really think of a way that *doesn't* have this mild problem with the first 1-2 spice? There isn't any easy way to boost the yield of only the first 2 spice resources.
Its a necessary evil given how corporations work.

What exactly is it you are proposing to change?

At some beelined Genetic Manipulation. When researched - it gave me to choose religion (Oo) i took Technocracy, and it got founded in my city!! :( There also in tech tree BTl religion marked in Genetic Manipulation. So, perhaps it is last there from previous religious system, but need to be removed, bc i just founded Technocracy as BTl at Genetic Manipulation

Good find. The game assumes that a religion has *some* prerequisite tech, but this religion does not. If it has no prereq tech, every religion founding gets the "choose religion" screen. I will have to figure out some way to fix this.

Reference: SL01

My suggestion for slaves:
a) Drop the capture probability to 50% for Harkonnen (from 100%)
b) Have the slavery civic give a +20% slave capture chance
c) Give slaves 2 movement points
d) Allow slaves to cross desert tiles, same as workers.
e) Have captured slaves spawn either outside enemy cultural borders, inside friendly cultural borders, in the closest friendly city, or in the capital city.
f) Maybe: allow slaves to be sacrificed in cities for a very small one-shot hammer bonus.

a,b: good idea to reduce the number of slaves and give more synergy to slavery civic.

c,d: good idea to make slaves more useful.

e: good idea, need to figure out how to do it.

f: I can add the action button, like for great engineer but only a small number of hammers. I am pretty sure the AI won't know how to use it.

I also had thought about sacrificing slaves for XP added to one unit, representing arena combat. I'm quite sure the AI won't know how to use it, and also I'm not sure how to implement it. You'd need some way to pick which unit gets the XP, if there are multiple units in the city.

The stack got attacked by a Quad that killed a defending Infantry. ... However, the rest of the stack got transported outside Harkonnen territory.

I have never heard of that. I can't think of any reason for it. Has anybody else ever seen this, or have you seen it again?

Also, I second that barb Crysknifers spawn way too fast. I think this is because the tech (which, as you said, dissipates to barbs when players have it) is fairly early, but the players need the Water Debt ressource to get the unit, whilst the barbs pretty much ignore ressource demands.

Interesting point that barbs spawn units without meeting resource requirements. I suppose this is probably true for vanilla axemen. The only way I know of to solve this is to prevent them altogether, but I agree these are very thematic units for the barbs to have. Let's try to find some other solution.

Reference: DI01

Well, i took a rest this weekend .. Please , its very important, chek by uself because it ruins challenge and AI goodness : AI dont know to defend in DW.

These are all good observations. Do you play vanilla games very much? Do you find that the AI in vanilla makes the same mistakes? It is important to know that, so we know where to investigate the code. If vanilla does just as badly, then we need to discuss with the BBAI team. If vanilla does well, then there must be something we have done in DW, which makes it hard for the AI to figure out. For example, DW has no roads but it has the Home Ground promotion. It *could be* that the AI does not understand the HG promo, and we have to teach that somehow.

Both of these choices are hard to work on, but we can certainly put it on the list to investigate.

Reference: SL02

I notice that when spice disappears, the created spice crawler stays. Shouldn't it be 'destroyed' when there isn't any more spice?

Several people have reported this. I have tried to reproduce it, but I cannot. Ahriman suggested it happens only when the tile is worked. What I did was increase the rate at which spice disappears by like 100x, then check every few turns to see if I could see any harvesters which were not on spice. I was not able to find any. Can some people play around with this and see if there is a pattern?

I have never heard of that. I can't think of any reason for it. Has anybody else ever seen this, or have you seen it again?



Interesting point that barbs spawn units without meeting resource requirements. I suppose this is probably true for vanilla axemen. The only way I know of to solve this is to prevent them altogether, but I agree these are very thematic units for the barbs to have. Let's try to find some other solution.

Reference: DI01

I have not been able to reproduce the Quad incident. But they can still travel on Mesa, and so can Suspensor crafts.

The solution could be giving Soldiers/Infantry +50% attack vs melee units. It would make it easier to pick off solo Crysknifers without ruining the function of later melee units because you'd obviously be moving them in stacks and defense bonuses for the guardsmen in cities would render it unfavourable to attack out.

These are all good observations. Do you play vanilla games very much? Do you find that the AI in vanilla makes the same mistakes? It is important to know that, so we know where to investigate the code. If vanilla does just as badly, then we need to discuss with the BBAI team. If vanilla does well, then there must be something we have done in DW, which makes it hard for the AI to figure out. For example, DW has no roads but it has the Home Ground promotion. It *could be* that the AI does not understand the HG promo, and we have to teach that somehow.

Both of these choices are hard to work on, but we can certainly put it on the list to investigate.

Reference: SL02

I can think of one very reasonable mistake the AI would make, like I am quite certain it could do in FfH if you haste one of their units for one turn; they give "go to" orders with the info that the unit moves faster than it actually will once the promo fades.

I could also imagine that the presence of so much unpassable terrain makes it harder for the AI to manage defenses, since it needs to protect all cities reachable by 'sea' (meaning sand), and moving units across sand in transports. The exception to this is obviously Fremen, who do very well in most of my games.

These are all good observations. Do you play vanilla games very much? Do you find that the AI in vanilla makes the same mistakes? It is important to know that, so we know where to investigate the code. If vanilla does just as badly, then we need to discuss with the BBAI team. If vanilla does well, then there must be something we have done in DW, which makes it hard for the AI to figure out. For example, DW has no roads but it has the Home Ground promotion. It *could be* that the AI does not understand the HG promo, and we have to teach that somehow.

Both of these choices are hard to work on, but we can certainly put it on the list to investigate.

Reference: SL02

I think its DW Problem. Vanilla AI knows terrain very well, and if you come with big stack to his city, he throw all units into city to defend it, even if you move few tiles away. Same in ffh. Offence should be as counter measure when AI’s cities as safe, and there should be some analysis of enemy visible stack/ power ratio and unit types. Ai don’t counter well in DW. Promos, certain unit types.
AI is very good at offence, though. But (I’ll summarize my points):
1. May be because mesa is vanilla peak AI prefer to move through flat land.
2. Defence. The problem, that in DW not-even defence spread, when Coast Cities and border cities are well defended and core cities less defended is not working. There are transports that can pass any terrain, and fast. All defence tactics should be reviewed. Core cities ARE vulnerable in DW. Thats a major change from vanilla. Its also major change for player, if player neglect inside rim cities defences - he lose game.
3. Defence n.2 – I don’t know why AI send his stacks to attack players well defended cities while leaving bad garrison. It seem odd, because I not remember such issue in vanilla. I think the problem is that UnitCombat types are totally changed in DW, and may be some slots mixed. Some coding. This is hardest one imo, and need deep insight into Unitclass tactics.
4. Target analysis and decision – as I mentioned, AI like Rabban should use his infantry stack against enemy that <0.4 of his power ratio asap, if he know that target can tech Maula pistols. Before target do that. If warmonger AI build stack of early units worst thing is to make him to wait till those units are outdated.
4a. In 1.6.2 game I played standard Deity game and was actually attacked very early by Ordos. May be it is linked to overall aI.

I am pretty sure the AI won't know how to use it.

Why? The AI uses great engineers to build things. And I think the AI uses slaves for hammers in FFH.

I also had thought about sacrificing slaves for XP added to one unit, representing arena combat. I'm quite sure the AI won't know how to use it, and also I'm not sure how to implement it.
Temporary happiness probably works better than XP. And I think the FFH AI uses that?
Maybe this ability could be tied to the Harkonnen slave pit?

Take a look at the code for Balseraph arena fighting in FFH, and the evil lizard man race temple in FF.

Let's try to find some other solution.

Well, if you want to have them, but later, then my suggestion about cloning them, creating an identical new barbarian-only unit with a slightly different name, and then putting that at a later tech (suspensors, or combat ornithopters would seem good; that way, people can deal with them).

The exception to this is obviously Fremen, who do very well in most of my games.

Really, are you playing with a high land % or more connected islands? Fremen AI does very badly in my experience on disconnected islands.

use his infantry stack against enemy that <0.4 of his power ratio asap, if he know that target can tech Maula pistols

I don't think this is really a feasible change; the AI can never know what the future tech tree is going to give you, or when.

Well, if you want to have them, but later, then my suggestion about cloning them, creating an identical new barbarian-only unit with a slightly different name, and then putting that at a later tech (suspensors, or combat ornithopters would seem good; that way, people can deal with them).



Really, are you playing with a high land % or more connected islands? Fremen AI does very badly in my experience on disconnected islands.



I don't think this is really a feasible change; the AI can never know what the future tech tree is going to give you, or when.

Nope, he can analyse your current techs. I am sure that some Tech tree analysis will make AI very smart. As you able to see his techs which he can research - same him, its tied to some function, and extracting value of that function and analysing it can bring results, but sure its all easy on paper, but should be hard code-wise, though it will be ultimate coding goal.

Well, if you want to have them, but later, then my suggestion about cloning them, creating an identical new barbarian-only unit with a slightly different name, and then putting that at a later tech (suspensors, or combat ornithopters would seem good; that way, people can deal with them).

Sounds like a good solution!

Really, are you playing with a high land % or more connected islands? Fremen AI does very badly in my experience on disconnected islands.

I play standard settings for the Arrakis.py map. I think... 22%?

Also, on that topic, I've noticed that the Fremen simply boom in pts and power early on, even compared to other AIs (in this game, though, the only AI to compare with was a Harkonnen who never expanded because the Fremen landlocked them). We are talking 3-4 times more power, and double my pts, something like 8-double the Harkonnen pts.

Also, Feyd Rautha seems to found the Sandworm religion most of my games with him... Isn't this pretty anti-lorish?

And in any case, if you only have 2-3 spice then you are either:
a) in the very early game
b) using Arrakis paradise civic (which severely limits the amount of spice you can pull in)
c) incredibly unlucky with spice blows and spice resource deletion
d) failing to build cities near the coast or build cultural buildings to expand your terrain.


Well another problem I've noticed is that it seems to me that you need to build your "big" cities inland and only have 'spice' towns on the rim of sand because the minute you start drilling wells and building certain buildings, the spice shifts away from your cultural boundary. So until you can build theaters, there is tons of spice JUST outside your cultural reach.

In my current game playing as Ix, the map I'm on has all these resources that create water right on the edge of the sand so even though I have about 10+ cities, I think I have 3 spice patches. So I figure screw it and am doing Arrakis paradise since I'm not getting any spice anyway.

So perhaps another Sid's tip might be for people to realize that a city next to a big patch of spice probably should be kept small and not to have certain improvements or buildings. That and keep your bigger cities in-land as possible.

Nope, he can analyse your current techs. I am sure that some Tech tree analysis will make AI very smart.

This still seems infeasible. AI declarations of war are based of what units you actually have, not what you could potentially build.
The declaration of war AI isn't going to be looking inside the contents of techs.

I play standard settings for the Arrakis.py map. I think... 22%?
Map size, # of AIs?
If you dont' have enough AIs, then there is lots of unsettled space, and lots of barbarian cities will be founded, and the Fremen are very good at picking those up with crysknife fighters vs soldiers defending.

Also, Feyd Rautha seems to found the Sandworm religion most of my games with him... Isn't this pretty anti-lorish?

Well, partly we haven't fixed the tech and leader flavors. That's on my to do list. So the AI's aren't emphasizing flavorful techs.

The Bene gesserit or the Fremen are the most logical founders of Shai-Hulad. Bene Gesserit starting with Mysticism should have a head-start. No other races should start with Mysticism except the Bene Tleilaxu, who can't found any religions other than there own Zensufisim.

because the minute you start drilling wells and building certain buildings, the spice shifts away from your cultural boundary

This is a deliberate strategic tradeoff, and fits well with the lore. If you start building catchbasins in reservoirs, or are lucky enough to have a ton of wells, then yeah, you aren't going to get much spice, but you'll have much bigger cities.
Coastal cities have less water access, but can potentially bring more spice into your fold.

So until you can build theaters
There are many other sources of culture early game. Religions and temples (especially imperium), wonders, specialists with meritocracy, plenty of stuff.
I think its great that there are some financial rewards from culture. Normally (in vanilla) culture is almost compeltely useless except in the rare cases where cultural borders touch.

We could consider changing the culture boundaries though (as in, how many culture points require to expand to cultural radius X). The old version of the mod had different but strange version of these, which we reverted to vanilla.
I like culture being valuable in giving more spice available to you.

David, which file are these stored in? I can take a look at some stage and try tweaking.

There are many other sources of culture early game. Religions and temples (especially imperium), wonders, specialists with meritocracy, plenty of stuff.

Of course there are but the point I was making that to build any of these early in the game requires lots of time because if you build up resources to grow your cities (in that you get more water) you end up creating the affect of pushing the spice away from you. That's why I was thinking it would be better to build your big cities inland and let them build units or the expensive wonders so your small 'spice' towns on the rim could concentrate on only building culture since (because they're small) they'd take a long time do to this.

Plus, I DO build a lot of cultural buildings and the like and the problem I tend to run into is you spend so much time building culture that you end up getting swamped by some Faction that seems to have done nothing but build units. So building culture is a dicey strategy considering how aggressive many of the Dune factions are.

if you build up resources to grow your cities (in that you get more water) you end up creating the affect of pushing the spice away from you

Wells, and the Arrakis paradise buildings, are the only things that can push spice away from you, and they are both very very valuable.

So building culture is a dicey strategy considering how aggressive many of the Dune factions are.

So there is a real strategic tradeoff between investing in culture (and thus spice access) and investing in military. That sounds fantastic to me. This is a strategy game, and tradeoffs are the most central aspect to strategy that there is.

So: why is this a problem?

Those militarists will have a weaker economy with less spice. Trading off economy vs military is central to Civ.

Why should you be able to have everything?

Why should you be able to have everything?

I don't have a problem other than perhaps sometimes not having my concerns taken at face value as if I was so newbie who can't tell his spice crawler from a hole in the ground. Look, I've been gaming since 1974 and playing Civ since Civ II so I know about the trade off of culture vs. military. I pointed out that since I often play the cultural path, I know the dangers.

My concern here is that the Dune Wars mod seems to create a situation where terrain is even more important than most mods. If you don't have places to put in wind traps and wells are you only real source of water, the trade off is you don't get spice and as we all know, the spice must flow. So in many games, I can either not develop my wells (and thus my cities can't grow) so I can harvest spice. However, this puts me in the position of having small cities where everything takes longer to build and I don't generate as much science.

That's okay. It's a puts the impetus on the Civ IV concept of 'specialty' cities more in force in that you can't have everything in every city. However, I'm pointing out that this isn't often clear to people new to the game. It's very frustrating when you have a 3-plot of spice being worked and a automated worker comes up and creates a well and suddenly you don't have a 3-plot of spice anymore. :eek:

So to get back to that spice I have to generate a lot of culture but even when I'm careful, I find the AI somehow has decided that building up their cities or whatever isn't as important as building units and sure enough here comes 2-3 suspensor transports filled with units with a wing of Vultures to back them up.

Again this isn't massively surprising, in fact I'm surprised the AI does "navy" so well since most Civ IV games (as opposed to Civ III) the AI is retarded in regards to marine invasions. However, as I've commented before, the AI will often declare war on me even when they are listed as being pleased with me! So I can't trust my friends, I can't trust my enemies, I can't afford not to build up my army but then again I can't afford not to build culture...and so I find myself struggling to find a balance.

So going back to my original point, I realize the game mechanics puts limitations on the modder in that since the spice crawler is represented as an improvement, it has to be inside the cultural boundary to be worked, it does cause irritation that there is all this 'free' spice just outside the limits of that boundary that you just can't work.

This is why I've wondered if there couldn't be a way to switch it to where the spice crawler is a specialty worker that is relatively expensive that generates a 1-tile of culture so it can work. (Forts in many mods do this like in Orbis) A 'worked' tile of spice disappears and the crawler then moves to the next one. Obviously you need to keep a carry-alls around to get them out of trouble when the worms arrive. I would think this would work since there is already a mechanic for generating hammers when forests are chopped down. Perhaps a additional form of wealth could be created so you'd have X amount of solaris and also have X amount of spice. Then spice could be traded in for hammers, solaris, units from the guild or other specialty things. Perhaps even certain promotions would need spice for things like prescience for units or reverend mothers.

Obviously this would cause spice flow to be more erratic, but farming anything is like that. Changing it to where you could get spice anywhere (other than within other factions cultural boundary) would be more like the book and make the danger of losing your crawlers really a factor. I tend to agree with others that complain the worms aren't that much of a threat. I mean they come in, eat some improvements that I go right back out to fix after it leaves. (yawn)

True I know many folk wouldn't want the micro-managing of watching their crawlers and all that but at least in Civ (unlike in Dune 2000) you get a warning that an enemy has been sighted so hopefully you can get a thopter out to your crawler before it goes the way of Shai-Haluud. Being able to harvest spice far from your borders would increase the risk since it would be harder (before suspensor carriers) for you to get your thopters there in time...or it would be since right now there isn't a mechanic that forces thopters to have to land from time to time. :(

Anyway, I don't want you folks to think a lot of us are out here just shooting holes in the mod that you folks have put a lot of work in. But any time a game goes farther afield from vanilla Civ you'd expect us out here in gamer land not to understand the mechanics of the game as good as you so don't be surprised there are a lot of struggles to come to grips with the game, especially with the Dune-O-Pedia not being done yet.

I don't have a problem other than perhaps sometimes not having my concerns taken at face value as if I was so newbie who can't tell his spice crawler from a hole in the ground.

I apologize if you feel disrespected. Such was not my intention. Your feedback is very valuable, and very much appreciated. Not many people take the time to write up detailed thoughful feedback, as you have.

I simply feel that the best way to analyze issues is to dig deep into them in terms of trying to figure out whether something is really a problem or not, and if so, what alternatives would work (and what worse problems they would create). So I try to challenge ideas hard to see if they survive; and if they do, adopt them.

If I didn't think your ideas were worth considering, I wouldn't bother critiquing them. :-)

My concern here is that the Dune Wars mod seems to create a situation where terrain is even more important than most mods
Yes, this is true. Water is very scarce on Arrakis, and so we want to try to create an environment that makes the player acutely aware of which tiles give water, and have those be a binding constraint. I think this is a good thing - or will be at least if we can improve the AI city selection AI.

So in many games, I can either not develop my wells (and thus my cities can't grow) so I can harvest spice

I think that it is very very rarely, if ever, worth not building wells in order to get a few more spice tiles, particularly considering that spice is temporary.

But the design purpose of wells was never really to push spice off; it was mostly intended that catchbasins and reservoirs do this. But we had both provide fresh water, for terraforming access and cottage boost.

We really wanted to make catchbasins reservoirs block off a lot of spice access, so we made it so that fresh water blocked spice not just in tiles with fresh water access, but in adjacent tiles too.

So some of the well blocking is an unintended consequence.

Maybe we can decouple these effects somehow.
So, well provides fresh water in 1 tile radius. Catchbasin provides fresh water in 1 tile radius, AND blocks spice blows in 2 tile radius. Reservoir provides fresh water in 3 tile radius AND blocks spice blows in 4 tile radius.
Remove the issue where spice can't appear in tiles with fresh water, or at least remoev the issue where spice can't appear *adjacent* to tiles with fresh water.

This would preserve the spice blocking effect of reservoir/catchbasin, without having wells have such a large spice-blocking effect, which I think is your main concern.

Culture would still help you get even more spice, but not as much would be blocked by coastal wells.

Do you think this would alleviate your concerns?

However, I'm pointing out that this isn't often clear to people new to the game.

We can try to provide better documentation on the effects between fresh water and spice, however they work.

in fact I'm surprised the AI does "navy" so well since most Civ IV games (as opposed to Civ III) the AI is retarded in regards to marine invasions.

Cephalo has written improved naval invasion AI for this mod.
I think its great that the AI is very aggressive like this. If you are finding it too tough, maybe a lower difficulty level would suit you better.
(Again, not trying to be insulting here.)

the AI will often declare war on me even when they are listed as being pleased with me!

Which AIs?
Some AIs are backstabbing, or are simply aggressive. Others are more loyal. Any Harkonnens, Ordos or Corrino in general shoudlnt' be trusted too much. You can generally rely more on the Bene Gesserit, Atreides or Fremen more often.

This is why I've wondered if there couldn't be a way to switch it to where the spice crawler is a specialty worker that is relatively expensive that generates a 1-tile of culture so it can work.

We've been thinking about this in other threads. Personally, I am strongly opposed to trying to push the game out into the deserts, away from the land. It is hard enough to get the AI to do well on land, getting it to contest the deep desert woudl be very hard, and I don't think it woudl be fun for the human player. It woudl also be easy for the human player to swarm the map with workers, they AI wouldn't realize that was a profitable strategy.

I tend to agree with others that complain the worms aren't that much of a threat. I mean they come in, eat some improvements that I go right back out to fix after it leaves. (yawn)

Can you think of a way of tweaknig worms to make them more interestnig, without also potentially destroy many units (especially for the AI) or forcing massive micromangement?
You should ideally be able to automate workers without losing them all to worms.
Since there isnt' really anything you can do about worms, other than try to avoid them, what else could they do other than eat some improvements, without becoming severely annoying and not-fun?

Anyway, I don't want you folks to think a lot of us are out here just shooting holes in the mod that you folks have put a lot of work in.
Not what any of us think; constructive criticsm is greatly appreciated, especially when its well thought out and communicated clearly, as in your case.

But any time a game goes farther afield from vanilla Civ you'd expect us out here in gamer land not to understand the mechanics of the game as good as you so don't be surprised there are a lot of struggles to come to grips with the game, especially with the Dune-O-Pedia not being done yet.

I commented about this before, but let me come back to it. *Everything* the beginning user needs to know is supposed to be covered in the Dune Wars Concepts tab in the civilopedia. Please list the things you were stuck on, which are not listed there, and we will add them. It is important to get this feedback from a new user, while you still count as a new user. The mod developers cannot think of them anymore.

I have just re-read the tab, and I agree that the information about how fresh water is produced and its prevention of spice is missing. This is embarrassing, and I will fix it.

You have already listed religion founding, axlotl tanks, and mentats as missing.

What else should we add to this tab?

May be some words that in comparison to vanilla DW player should be more carefull with his defence, because, eventually, any point/place/tile of his empire is quite vulnerable.
May be just a single sentence.

Gameplay in DW is quite different, and combat strategies too.

Maybe we can decouple these effects somehow.
So, well provides fresh water in 1 tile radius. Catchbasin provides fresh water in 1 tile radius, AND blocks spice blows in 2 tile radius. Reservoir provides fresh water in 3 tile radius AND blocks spice blows in 4 tile radius. Remove the issue where spice can't appear in tiles with fresh water, or at least remove the issue where spice can't appear *adjacent* to tiles with fresh water.

The discussion about this design happened around this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8476898&postcount=69) in the terraforming mechanics thread; go backwards in the thread to find previous history, forward to find discussion about the current design.

The previous design, where fresh water, spice prevention and terraform-able plots were tracked separately, had grown too complex. I unified them into one thing. Perhaps we can tweak this, rather than going back to the previous approach. For example, we are not using the irrigation mechanic. This is different from fresh water as discussed around this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8510213&postcount=154). Perhaps wells should not spread fresh water, so that only catchbasins and reservoirs will do this; and the cottage hammer bonus can come from irrigation.

What do you think?

Well another problem I've noticed is that it seems to me that you need to build your "big" cities inland and only have 'spice' towns on the rim of sand because the minute you start drilling wells and building certain buildings, the spice shifts away from your cultural boundary. So until you can build theaters, there is tons of spice JUST outside your cultural reach.

In my current game playing as Ix, the map I'm on has all these resources that create water right on the edge of the sand so even though I have about 10+ cities, I think I have 3 spice patches. So I figure screw it and am doing Arrakis paradise since I'm not getting any spice anyway.

This is the point I've been trying to get through; either you have big cities capable of pumping out units, or you have small cities that can farm spice. Now, if the Permanent Peace option is enabled, you would do well in picking the latter. But I feel that this is rarely the case and that, when choosing between being the conqueror or the cottage-cheese sitting duck, I personally prefer a good stroll in my neighboors cities, flashing my new horde of Bladesmen.

Map size, # of AIs?
If you dont' have enough AIs, then there is lots of unsettled space, and lots of barbarian cities will be founded, and the Fremen are very good at picking those up with crysknife fighters vs soldiers defending.

In this case, I tried a Tiny game with me as Paul Atreides, AIs were Feyd Ratha of the Harkonnen and Liet-Kynes of the Fremen. As I said, Feyd got off to a bad start before I killed him. But the Fremen only took one barb city, and I took one aswell.

What bothers me more is their powergraph and score, though, it skyrocketed and just stayed 3-4 times mine (power) from completely early on. I mean, like, pre-Crysknives. And their score is still almost double mine, but that's probably due to a bit more cities and wonders (do these give more pts in DW than standard games?)

Well, partly we haven't fixed the tech and leader flavors. That's on my to do list. So the AI's aren't emphasizing flavorful techs.

The Bene gesserit or the Fremen are the most logical founders of Shai-Hulad. Bene Gesserit starting with Mysticism should have a head-start. No other races should start with Mysticism except the Bene Tleilaxu, who can't found any religions other than there own Zensufisim.



This is a deliberate strategic tradeoff, and fits well with the lore. If you start building catchbasins in reservoirs, or are lucky enough to have a ton of wells, then yeah, you aren't going to get much spice, but you'll have much bigger cities.
Coastal cities have less water access, but can potentially bring more spice into your fold.

It may be an intended trade-off, but it is a trade-off that in most cases is completely off-scale because a proper industry makes you able to conquer the world. Hammers > Commerce.

I think that it is very very rarely, if ever, worth not building wells in order to get a few more spice tiles, particularly considering that spice is temporary.

Me too. Which is why Spice plays a completely minor role in my games; I make the rational choice with each city - "good city or minor improvement to another city?"

But the design purpose of wells was never really to push spice off; it was mostly intended that catchbasins and reservoirs do this. But we had both provide fresh water, for terraforming access and cottage boost.

It would be a good solution to stop wells from spreading fresh water. The cottages don't need the boost, we have Wind turbines for hammers (and solar energy aswell if in dire need). That way it would be easier to keep more spice.

We really wanted to make catchbasins reservoirs block off a lot of spice access, so we made it so that fresh water blocked spice not just in tiles with fresh water access, but in adjacent tiles too.

So some of the well blocking is an unintended consequence.

Maybe we can decouple these effects somehow.
So, well provides fresh water in 1 tile radius. Catchbasin provides fresh water in 1 tile radius, AND blocks spice blows in 2 tile radius. Reservoir provides fresh water in 3 tile radius AND blocks spice blows in 4 tile radius.
Remove the issue where spice can't appear in tiles with fresh water, or at least remoev the issue where spice can't appear *adjacent* to tiles with fresh water.

This would preserve the spice blocking effect of reservoir/catchbasin, without having wells have such a large spice-blocking effect, which I think is your main concern.

Culture would still help you get even more spice, but not as much would be blocked by coastal wells.

Definately an improvement, I think.

Can you think of a way of tweaknig worms to make them more interestnig, without also potentially destroy many units (especially for the AI) or forcing massive micromangement?
You should ideally be able to automate workers without losing them all to worms.
Since there isnt' really anything you can do about worms, other than try to avoid them, what else could they do other than eat some improvements, without becoming severely annoying and not-fun?

Would making Worms move at speed 2 be outrageous? And have them auto-raze improvements when passing over them (instead of ending a turn on them?)?

Perhaps wells should not spread fresh water, so that only catchbasins and reservoirs will do this; and the cottage hammer bonus can come from irrigation.

Possibly. What we lose from this though is being able to get some terraforming of tiles that are:
a) not near a city at all
b) near a city that has low water income, so you don't want to have to build catchbasins there.
Atm, tiles can terraform if they are next to wells, which is a good thing IMO.

Another thought:
could this issue be behind the magical non-disappearing harvester issue?
i) build harvester on spice
ii) build well nearby; spice gets destroyed, but harvester remains forever

This would explain why its only happening to tiles near to shore, and so why I thought it might be from worked tiles.

In this case, I tried a Tiny game
The game is really not balanced for Tiny.
The Fremen early game advantage comes from the +1 water from deathstills, and their ability to snag more goody huts (which give gold and techs) using scouts.

The cottages don't need the boost, we have Wind turbines for hammers (and solar energy aswell if in dire need).
Without the boost, the AI wont' build cottages. Cottage = 1c, turbine = 1h1c. AI builds turbines.
Plus, there was a design goal to make fresh water access more interesting.

Would making Worms move at speed 2 be outrageous?
I think this would be incredibly unfun, constantly having your units destroyed by worms charging at you out of the fog of war.

AI could also get severely messed up by it.

The game is really not balanced for Tiny.
The Fremen early game advantage comes from the +1 water from deathstills, and their ability to snag more goody huts (which give gold and techs) using scouts.

I know Tiny is unbalanced.

Without the boost, the AI wont' build cottages. Cottage = 1c, turbine = 1h1c. AI builds turbines.
Plus, there was a design goal to make fresh water access more interesting.

I can understand why the water needs to be interesting, and the AI cottaging issue. I was just suggesting something that would correct the Spice issue.

I think this would be incredibly unfun, constantly having your units destroyed by worms charging at you out of the fog of war.

AI could also get severely messed up by it.

Right, again, just a stray idea.

Another thought:
could this issue be behind the magical non-disappearing harvester issue?
i) build harvester on spice
ii) build well nearby; spice gets destroyed, but harvester remains forever

Ah-ha! I bet that is it.

Which AIs? Some AIs are backstabbing, or are simply aggressive. Others are more loyal. Any Harkonnens, Ordos or Corrino in general shoudlnt' be trusted too much. You can generally rely more on the Bene Gesserit, Atreides or Fremen more often.

Just a quick reply as I'm on break at school. What surprised me with this was it was Leto II of the Atreides! We had been mostly friendly throughout the game and after some tech trading seemed to be best buds, but then 3-6 turns later he attacks me out of the blue. About the only thing I can think of is Corrino bribed him into attacking me since I was already at war with them.

While I don't think this sort of thing shouldn't be allowed to happen, I do wish there was some diplomatic penalty for attacking someone who is pleased with you. As I said on another forum, if factions see another faction stab an 'ally' in the back, they too will become very distrustful of that person. I mean to me (not saying there isn't any) there doesn't seem to be much penalty for being a backstabber or a reward for sticking true to your allies.

I mean you think you'd get a bonus with a faction everytime you refuse another factions request to go to war with them. I mean I'm taking a diplomatic hit for the refusal, it would be nice to get a reward.

Of course I'm sure that would probably be a pain to code. :(

Anyway, I totally agree with you; trusting the Harkonen or Ordos is a good way to end up dead. :goodjob:

You have already listed religion founding, axlotl tanks, and mentats as missing.

What else should we add to this tab?

A lot of the stuff isn't missing; it's just in game it's a bit harder to go through. My biggest beef with Civ is I wish you could read the Civlopedia without opening the game. As I said, if the game is opened...I want to play it! :lol: I don't know, maybe a general warning. "DON'T THINK YOU CAN LEARN WHILE PLAYING! WE MEAN IT READ THE RULES!" :goodjob:

I have not been able to reproduce the Quad incident. But they can still travel on Mesa, and so can Suspensor crafts.

Thank you for pointing this out several times. This is on the list of items to be fixed.

I should point out that all of the current issues to be fixed, are kept in a spreadsheet. You can find the latest spreadsheet at this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8567018&postcount=529). Please note the date on that post; clearly anything which has been reported after that date will not be in the sheet yet. I put updated spreadsheets onto that thread, and there is more detailed discussion about what is coming up in future patches.

I can think of one very reasonable mistake the AI would make, like I am quite certain it could do in FfH if you haste one of their units for one turn; they give "go to" orders with the info that the unit moves faster than it actually will once the promo fades.

That seems possible. However, if the unit is "going to" any location inside cultural borders, the computation will be correct. This miscalculation only occurs if it is going outside cultural borders. When you see the units leaving cities to attack, are the target stacks inside cultural borders or outside? The behavior we want is something like spearmen city defenders in vanilla. They will go on roads one plot away to attack, so they can move back into the city before the end of the turn. This is what "should" happen with quads; they should be city defenders who can go 1-2 plots outside the city to attack, and then get back inside the city before the end of the turn.

We could consider changing the culture boundaries though (as in, how many culture points require to expand to cultural radius X). ... David, which file are these stored in? I can take a look at some stage and try tweaking.

gameinfo/civ4culturelevelinfo.xml:
<CultureLevelInfo>
<Type>CULTURELEVEL_FLEDGLING</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_CULTURELEVEL_FLEDGLING</Description>
<iCityDefenseModifier>20</iCityDefenseModifier>
<SpeedThresholds>
<SpeedThreshold>
<GameSpeedType>GAMESPEED_MARATHON</GameSpeedType>
<iThreshold>30</iThreshold>
</SpeedThreshold>

For each named cultural level such as Fledgling, each game speed has a different threshold value.

A lot of the stuff isn't missing; it's just in game it's a bit harder to go through. My biggest beef with Civ is I wish you could read the Civlopedia without opening the game. As I said, if the game is opened...I want to play it! :lol: I don't know, maybe a general warning. "DON'T THINK YOU CAN LEARN WHILE PLAYING! WE MEAN IT READ THE RULES!" :goodjob:

(half joke) Perhaps we should have a popup which comes up when you start the game; it asks you a question about the rules, and unless you get the right answer, all it will let you access is the civilopedia.

hey david, i just read there's gonna be a new mad max movie - guess how its gonna be named:

Fury Road!

someones a psychic?

Just a quick reply as I'm on break at school. What surprised me with this was it was Leto II of the Atreides! We had been mostly friendly throughout the game and after some tech trading seemed to be best buds, but then 3-6 turns later he attacks me out of the blue. About the only thing I can think of is Corrino bribed him into attacking me since I was already at war with them.

Hmm.
Well, take a look at the leader values here. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=339007
Leto II is a pretty middle of the road AI. Fairly religious (and wants you to be same religion a lot), and likes Wonders, but not particualrly aggressive.

Only someone he is PLEASED with can get him to declare war on someone else, and he will refuse to be bribed into war with anyone he is FRIENDLY with. So if you had friendly relations with him, he couldn't be bribed to attack you; if you had less than friendly relations, then he could be bribed to attack you only by someone else who was friendly.
However, like any AI, he could still just dogpile war you, or attack if you were nearby and seemed weak.

hey david, i just read there's gonna be a new mad max movie - guess how its gonna be named:

Fury Road!

someones a psychic?

There have been rumors about a new Mad Max movie for many, many years. When I started the Fury Road mod, I used google, and found that was the name they would be using. So I took their idea. Are you sure the news you saw was "new" news?

yeah, pretty solid news,

they talked about Sam Worthington in it, will be done by the same director who did the last three.

sweet huh..

I realize the game mechanics puts limitations on the modder in that since the spice crawler is represented as an improvement, it has to be inside the cultural boundary to be worked, it does cause irritation that there is all this 'free' spice just outside the limits of that boundary that you just can't work.

This is why I've wondered if there couldn't be a way to switch it to where the spice crawler is a specialty worker that is relatively expensive that generates a 1-tile of culture so it can work. .

We have discussed this a few times in the early days of the mod. Several people including koma13 have complained that we are rejecting this type of idea without giving it enough consideration.

The first part is to make the improvement buildable outside cultural borders, spread culture, etc. The second part is getting the AI to really understand this, send workers there, protect them, and so forth. If we do the first part without the second, the human player will walk all over the AI, and it will be no challenge at all. The second part is really hard to do.

If somebody wants to go off and write the AI code for the second part, great. I will be happy to integrate it. But I feel the game will be completely unchallenging if the human player can get income this way and the AI can't. So I don't feel we should change the mechanic until both parts are available.

Add the third requirement: contesting resources away from the deep desert, with only suspensors, thopters and Fremen, is balanced and actually fun.

Without the boost, the AI wont' build cottages. Cottage = 1c, turbine = 1h1c. AI builds turbines.

This may be fixed, or at least improved, in the new 1.6.2 version with the updated BBAI (to v0.81). The problem with workers cycling over tiles swapping them from cottages to something else and back was caused by the AI not valuing the potential growth of cottages correctly. In v0.80 of BBAI this was fixed. I think the versions of DW before 1.6.2 used a version of BBAI from before v0.80, so this fix would be new to DW.

This may or may not improve the AI's valuing of a cottage's future growth for DW.

It is one more reason to test 1.6.2.

Yep as i told, i think there is improvement of ai in 1.6.2, and i'd advise not to downgrade, but use it, howver it need adaptation for DW. Uts better to work, test and adapt it than just deny. I think it doing its job, and i seen slight improvement of AI's growth between 1.6.1 and 1.6.2
I cant beat yet 9 player deity game on small map. I can beat tiny deity , or immortal small with struggle (if i get unlucky i may lose). Using 1.6.1 once i'v risen to power noone were able to stop me (played as BTl). May be its just powerfull plague.

Only someone he is PLEASED with can get him to declare war on someone else, and he will refuse to be bribed into war with anyone he is FRIENDLY with. So if you had friendly relations with him, he couldn't be bribed to attack you; if you had less than friendly relations, then he could be bribed to attack you only by someone else who was friendly.

However, like any AI, he could still just dogpile war you, or attack if you were nearby and seemed weak.

Well that's sort of what I was thinking. it surprised me since Corrino was the only one I was at war with and even then Corrino declared war on me and except for some thopters picking off easy units, we pretty much ignored that we were at war since their faction was far away. So it wasn't like I was weak (I wasn't since I had built up a lot of units expecting a war with the nearby Harkonens) or having lots of factions at war with me.

It's why I thought maybe there could be an option for a alert (not a pop-up but the alerts like at the top of the screen) to announce a shift in diplomacy. I mean it's easy to miss even with the iconic faces. Plus sometimes I shut down that info because with the long names of Dune Wars, it sort of fills up the screen and I accidentally click on a faction instead of a unit.

I mean I'd think a shift from Pleased to Cautious in the span of 6 turns is enough of a shift to cause your diplomatic types to freak out and alert you, right? :eek:

The first part is to make the improvement buildable outside cultural borders, spread culture, etc. The second part is getting the AI to really understand this, send workers there, protect them, and so forth. If we do the first part without the second, the human player will walk all over the AI, and it will be no challenge at all. The second part is really hard to do.

(sigh) I think this is similar to something I thought would make Fury Road more fun and you agreed with me...and then pointed out it would hose the AI. I think that is something that is easy for us non-modders to forget; yeah you can code it but to get the AI to do it is another can of worms.

As I mentioned earlier, kudos to whoever wrote that naval AI upgrade; I've always been disappointed at how Civ III was better at navies than Civ IV so it's nice to see improvement. Even before the map issue, I'd played on a Archipelago to slow down the aggression from rival factions. Even though it was a shock, it was great to see the AI attack me anyway via suspensor craft and with enough troops to be a threat.

Oh well, hopefully a fix could be made since I think have a crawler unit needing a carry-all for safety would be a better way to go.

DV23 - Just started a game as Corrino and I start with 2 scout thopters, a soldier and a settler. This seems a bit unfair compared with other civs that start with 2 soldiers and a settler. Can we just standardized it for everyone apart from the Fremen, so that everyone gets a settler, a soldier and a scout thopter.

Are you sure? What difficulty level? I cannot reproduce this. On Noble, I get one thopter, one soldier and one settler. Is it possible that your initial city was near a tribal village, and they gave you a scout?

Nope, not sure. Can't recreate. I still think 1 scout thopter, 1 soldier and 1 settler is a nice combination for everyone with the Fremen getting the Fremen scout instead.

It's why I thought maybe there could be an option for a alert (not a pop-up but the alerts like at the top of the screen) to announce a shift in diplomacy. I mean it's easy to miss even with the iconic faces. Plus sometimes I shut down that info because with the long names of Dune Wars, it sort of fills up the screen and I accidentally click on a faction instead of a unit.

I mean I'd think a shift from Pleased to Cautious in the span of 6 turns is enough of a shift to cause your diplomatic types to freak out and alert you, right?

I think we're talking past each other a little here.
If Leto II attacked you when you had Pleased relations or higher, it doesn't mean that your relations dropped down to cautious (relations changes are basically always due to something that you as the player did), it means that he wasn't bribed into attacking you; he attacked you on his own, probably because he saw that you were a threat and saw that you were already at war with someone else. Most AIs are much more likely to attack someone who is already at war.

Good relations makes it less likely that this will happen, but not impossible.

Did you share a state religion with LetoII? This would also make it much less likely for him to DOW you.

Did you share a state religion with LetoII? This would also make it much less likely for him to DOW you.

I think I did, but not sure.

Well I still believe that there needs to be some penalty for going to war with someone who is pleased with you, especially if you share the same religion. Folks who know me know I do wish there was a way to have more of the diplomatic options of the game Europa Universalis. While we can't do Casa Belli or at the hit you take on stability, I'd think there might be a way to at least take a diplomatic penalty for attacking someone who is pleased with you and perhaps some :mad: for a time in your own cities for attacking 'another of the faith' - doesn't mean you can't do it, just that you have to weigh the risk.

Also, to ask again, I do wish for (if it isn't there already) the flip side to that. I don't like that I get a diplomatic hit with Civ X when they ask me to attack Civ Y. I mean now I have a :mad: with X in the vein of "You refused to help us!" Okay well why don't I get a :) with Y in the vein of "You remain true to me!" and maybe over time you might get a general :) bonus with other Civs "You are a loyal friend to your allies".

On a semi-humorous vein, I do wish there was a diplomatic option to insult folks. To often I get asked by Civs for some fabulously valuable tech and I want to say something more than just no. Something like, "Do you own research you lazy bunch of hacks! You'll get those secrets when you pry them out of my cold, dead hands!"

That being said, I was happy the day the "Cease Bothering Me!" option was added! :p

Well I still believe that there needs to be some penalty for going to war with someone who is pleased with you, especially if you share the same religion

There is. When Leto II declared war on you, get got a permanent diplomacy penalties with the other factions who liked you.
Just like how you get a diplomacy penalty with the friends of people who you declare war on.

I don't like that I get a diplomatic hit with Civ X when they ask me to attack Civ Y

Then your quibble is with vanilla civ4. I don't think we should be getting into detailed changes of the diplomacy system in this mod.
The mechanic is there to try to force players to pick sides, and to encourage factionalism and conflict. It SHOULD be hard to remain friends with everyone.
Note that if you accept a request to declare war, you get a diplomatic bonus with the person who asked you.

That being said, I was happy the day the "Cease Bothering Me!" option was added!
Does this actually do anything? Does it stop them from approaching you with requests, until you next initiate relations with them?

All cities with the religion that your enemy runs as state religion suffer a :mad: penalty. But then again, this is for both parts of the war, I think.

The "loyalty" thing you think of is just a twist of the "there has been peace in our time", right?

Ai attack mechanics are simple once you know them. Most AIs can attack at Pleased, but unless bribed you'd see it coming by the WHEOOH. Friendly AIs can often be trusted.

Be wary that the AI can decide to attack you when cautious, then wait and grow to pleased or friendly, and then still DoW you.

Does this actually do anything? Does it stop them from
approaching you with requests, until you next initiate relations with them?

Well I've found that it is a wonderful tool to goad a Civ into attacking you when you don't want to attack them. I've noticed that often times attacking Civs first often voids a defensive pact you have with another Civ. This way, by insulting them into war, you get the war you wanted and you get to keep your defensive pact.

Plus even though you risk war, it is nice that it causes that Civ to stop asking you for things you aren't going to give them.

In regard to Civ IV diplomacy, yes I do believe Firaxis needs to step up and do better. I've always wondered why Civ didn't incorporate a lot of the diplomacy from Alpha Centauri which did diplomacy a lot better.

That being said, I was happy the day the "Cease Bothering Me!" option was added!
Does this actually do anything? Does it stop them from approaching you with requests, until you next initiate relations with them?

That's correct. For DW, it may not make that much difference. But if you play the main scenario of HOTK, where there are 30 civs, it would help a lot. I get 4-5 requests per turn, sometimes, to join a war or trade something.

That's correct. For DW, it may not make that much difference. But if you play the main scenario of HOTK, where there are 30 civs, it would help a lot. I get 4-5 requests per turn, sometimes, to join a war or trade something.

In fact I remember asking in that Mod if there was a way to keep Civs I hadn't met yet from talking to me. If I remember right you'd be in Eastern China and some Western China Civ who got your "address" by buying a map from another Civ would appear and want you to go to war with some Civ you had no clue who they were or where they were! I mean I don't think a Civ should be allowed to ask you to go to war with another Civ is the only way you have to get to there is through the territory of another civ.

I think they tried to fix that. :p

@ Ahriman, are you up for another design challenge?

A while ago, we observed that the flavors for the various techs are set randomly. These flavors are used by the AI to decide which tech to research. The flavors have a value from 0-10 in categories such as culture, gold, etc. I have extracted the current flavors into the attached spreadsheet.

If you have the chance, could you update this sheet with "reasonable" flavors? It is not exact; but just about any values you give will be better than the current random ones.

I will get to it, possibly tomorrow. And similarly pick leaderhead flavor priorities.

Something that would help on this; is it easy/possible to pull out the flavors from vanilla and dump them in an Excel file?
Just so I have some idea of starting values, and things like: do all techs need flavors to add to the same number or not (ie are they just weights, or do they also emphasize particular techs, by giving higher total flavor values?).

I think its about emphasizing too.

Something that would help on this; is it easy/possible to pull out the flavors from vanilla and dump them in an Excel file?
Just so I have some idea of starting values, and things like: do all techs need flavors to add to the same number or not (ie are they just weights, or do they also emphasize particular techs, by giving higher total flavor values?).

Ah ... did you notice the spreadsheet I attached two posts back?

I assumed that was the existing Dunewars file values.
How do those compare to vanilla? Are they all identical to particular vanilla techs that served as the base?

Sorry, I missed your point about *vanilla* values. The spreadsheet does give the current values for DW. But individual technologies in the DW file have been renamed and reorganized, while the flavor values themselves remain untouched. So, for example in 1.0, a vanilla technology like "Optics" was renamed to "Riding the Worm", and then in 1.4.x the "Riding the Worm" technology was given some different prerequisites and moved elsewhere in the tree. "Riding the Worm" is now renamed in 1.6.1b, but it still has the same flavor values as vanilla optics.

So, any statistical analysis you want to do, such as looking at expected ranges of the flavors, is perfectly valid on the existing DW file. The names and effects are all different now, but the distribution of flavor values is identical to vanilla.

So, any statistical analysis you want to do, such as looking at expected ranges of the flavors, is perfectly valid on the existing DW file. The names and effects are all different now, but the distribution of flavor values is identical to vanilla.

Understood. Thanks, I will use these as a guide.

Flavors in Excel and tweaked Leaderhead flavors.

A few pages back, arkham4269 commented that he lost a bunch of spice income due to a well being built on a coast, and several people agreed that you should have large inland cities and small coastal cities. We want to have an irrigation bonus so that the AI will build villages; but perhaps there is another way to get it.

I did an experiment by removing fresh water from wells and adding fresh water due to the early game water cache building. I also turned on the irrigation system, and allowed most improvements to carry irrigation. So, a city acts as the only source of fresh water, and as long as you build improvements near the city first, pretty much all villages get irrigation from the city.

I compared the total scores of the civs after 255 turns, and they were pretty similar in the original game, and with this irrigation system. The total commerce of all the players was similar. I visually inspected, and the number/size of villages seemed pretty similar also.

The main difference that I can see with this system is less unexpected removal of spice (due to wells), and perhaps a little bit less spread of terraforming. You won't get any terraforming around wells. But since grassland can spawn an oasis, which is a source of fresh water, it is possible for terraforming to spread a long distance.

What do you think? Is it worth putting this variation into 1.6.3 to see how people like it?

I like this idea/change :)
Terraforming needed some little "hampering" anyways, and spice economy needs light boost

that (with hw discount implementation) will be enough and well balanced change.

I still think Terraforming is wayyyy too slow. i only got 2 ancored grassland tiles throught my 9 city empire over 100 turns and every one of my cities had the first building that spreads anchor grass (i forget the name)

it could be good if there was a game option called 'Rapid Terraforming' which increased the rate of terraforming. and an option for 'Rapid Spice Formation' which increased the rate that spice is generated and increases the lifespan of Spice.

I did an experiment by removing fresh water from wells and adding fresh water due to the early game water cache building. I also turned on the irrigation system, and allowed most improvements to carry irrigation. So, a city acts as the only source of fresh water, and as long as you build improvements near the city first, pretty much all villages get irrigation from the city.

My issues:
1) Does giving the water cache fresh water cache fresh water mean that tiles around a city will terraform without a catchbasin? If so, this severely discourages construction of catchbasins, which is a bad thing. I'm assuming this isn't the case. [I always mess up fresh water on the tile vs access.]
2) Why spread irrigation? The whole point of the cottages bonus with irrigation was that this should be a bonus *only* in a few tiles, and only around fresh water sources. So you couldn't just spam cottages everywhere with their hammer bonus; you should build turbines or solar farms elsewhere where there wasn't fresh water.
If improvements spread irrigation, then you can just get cottages with hammer bonus everywhere.
Also, even if you switch from wells providing fresh water to cities providing fresh water, why would that chance also need to include improvements spreading irrigation?? I don't see how these are related. We can switch the water supply from well to city without needing improvements to spread irrigation.
3) I dislike only getting terraforming near catchbasins. There are distributional issues. In the status quo, a city with low water income, where you don't really want to build a catchbasin to start with, can still get terraforming around it if a well is nearby, which can give it enough water income so that it can later build a catchbasin without starving to death.
In the new system, terraforming *only* occurs on tiles adjacnet to catchbasin cities until arrakis transformation. So there is waaay less terraforming, not just slightly less.
I think the cure is might be worse than the disease.
If we do implement this, could we at least have the Reservoir fresh water range moved out to 3?

Personally, I tend to think that the spice loss from wells is over-rated. If we're doing tests, how about:
a) Game with wells providing fresh water.
b) Game with wells not providing fresh water and water cache doing it instead
And monitor the number of spice resource each player has. Does it really change the total much?


I still think Terraforming is wayyyy too slow. i only got 2 ancored grassland tiles throught my 9 city empire over 100 turns and every one of my cities had the first building that spreads anchor grass (i forget the name)

I find that very surprising. If you had 9 cities with catchbasins, each fresh water tile should have had ~2.75% chance to terraform per turn. You are aware that only tiles with fresh water (ie next to wells or catchbasins) can change?
If anything I find terraforming happens quite quickly - often before I get to Arrakis transformation tech.
What game speed are you playing?

I can't start Dune Wars, I installed and played (immidetaly after first instalation) in DW 1.6.1 and everything was OK. (I have BTS 3.19) I saved game, came back after few days and when XML is loading DW is crash down. Why? Anyone has similliar problem? Do you have any partch or idea how to repair?

Thanks for answer

I can't start Dune Wars, I installed and played (immidetaly after first instalation) in DW 1.6.1 and everything was OK. (I have BTS 3.19) I saved game, came back after few days and when XML is loading DW is crash down. Why? Anyone has similliar problem? Do you have any partch or idea how to repair?

Thanks for answer

You downloaded 1.6.1 and started a game. You played for a while and saved. Then you came back later and you cannot load the game. Is that correct? Did you change anything on your system in the meantime?

Also what system/OS you using?

Did you change anything on your system in the meantime?

To emphasize David's point; did you install another patch after saving the game?

hey,

this wasn't adresed yet, but some vehicles like quad can go over some of the peaks,

i think i know why, peak isnt a regular terran, its placed over a regular terrain , so theres one terrain that it allows the quad to go over and another - that wont allow it to pass.

If you check out the Mountains Back to Service modpack thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=311211&page=2), david has raised this issue there. Basically, the peak related tags don't do what we want - it is an issue with the modpack.

hey guys, i have some solution to our mountais passable problem,

but i need one of you python experts,

we ned to create a dummy feature, with some invisible art, that will be set, to appear on every peak on the map,
thus,
we can limit the entering of units into that feature,
and like this we can control who can go over a peak and who cant!

i have tested it through the world builder, and it works.

its basically going around the problem and cheat it...:)

my only problem now 0 is how to get the mapscript to create tge "test" feature i created on each peak.

so, who's gonna help?

hey,

this wasn't adresed yet, but some vehicles like quad can go over some of the peaks,

i think i know why, peak isnt a regular terran, its placed over a regular terrain , so theres one terrain that it allows the quad to go over and another - that wont allow it to pass.

See proposed solution in this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8562719&postcount=31). I can't find the thread reference quickly, but the last time we discussed this there was some concern that fixing this will have a big negative effect on the game. Suspensors may have to take a long detour to reach a city for attacking.

This is in the issue spreadsheet and I hope to fix it someday, but it gets pushed down due to the time needed to properly test.

yehah saw that,

but how about my solution? it might be easier and saver ,

can you tell me how can i make a feature to appear on the map?

im really sure that what i proposed here can serve us for the time being,
dont you think?

That is a good idea. To implement it, you have to add a feature, which is an invisible feature like wind trap water. Then you have to write new python code in both of the mapscript files, which loops over all the plots and adds the feature if the plot is a peak.

Adding the flag into the sdk involves less code and is probably a better solution.

yeah sdk is mostly better,

i tried to add the feature to the mapgenerator - i added a line:

self.featureTest = self.gc.getInfoTypeForString("FEATURE_Test")

and the xml section, but the test (gave it an rock arch art for now) didnt apeared on the whole map.

is there anywhere else i need to add a line in the python?

It seems messy to add a dummy feature. Why not wait for a proper solution, particularly since we are not sure whether this change is desirable for gameplay as david says?

ok,
but i think we shouldnt delay dealing with this, its a major flaw in game play strategy in my opinion.

have you got the new 1.6.2?

@ deliverator, I am afraid that many changes are starting to "single thread" through me. If it is possible for others to also fix the bugs or make and test experimental changes, it is better overall.

@ keldath, you can try this change in publicmaps/archipelago.py, but I would have to study arrakis.py to find the corresponding location. Add the three red lines:

def addFeatures():
[...]
peak = gc.getInfoTypeForString("TERRAIN_PEAK")
peakfeat = gc.getInfoTypeForString("FEATURE_Test")
for ix in range(xmax):
for iy in range(ymax):
pPlot = map.plot(ix, iy)
[...]
# Make all Graben terrain into Sink/Graben unless Coastal in which case make it Mesa
elif pPlot.getTerrainType() == plains:
pPlot.setPlotType(PlotTypes.PLOT_HILLS, false, false)
if pPlot.isPeak():
pPlot.setFeatureType(peakfeat, 0)
Make sure that the tabs in the lines you add stay as tabs. Python is very fussy about white space.

To emphasize David's point; did you install another patch after saving the game?

No. I don't change anything. I have: Vista Home Prem. Edit. CIV4:BtS 3.19 with Dune Wars 1.6.1.

Problem is: I can not start a game at all. During loading a mod (not a saved game) game is crash when load XML.

@Gisz: Try right clicking and selecting Run as Administrator. Multiple Vista users have said the mod only works this way.

This vista problem bothers me. I have posted on this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=340555) to learn more.

HEY DAVID!

AWESOME thanks a lot!

well it 95% works, some mountains are still left without the feature, but most have it:


http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=232806&stc=1&d=1256925454

any ideas?

This section may also need the line "setFeatureType" added:

# Replace Hills with Peaks (to make Peaks=Mesa more prevalent)
elif pPlot.isHills():
pPlot.setPlotType(PlotTypes.PLOT_PEAK, false, false)
pPlot.setTerrainType(peak, false, false)

Please do test carefully to see if the AI is still able to reach cities to attack them. We may decide this hurts gameplay too much.

you mean this?

if pPlot.isPeak():
pPlot.setFeatureType(peakfeat, 0)

and sure ill make the proper tests

Please do test carefully to see if the AI is still able to reach cities to attack them. We may decide this hurts gameplay too much.

Agreed.
Note that we can probably capture many of the desired features if we can give a strength penalty adjustment on mesa tiles.

hey,
added:

if pPlot.isPeak():
pPlot.setFeatureType(peakfeat, 0)

again beneath the section :

# Replace Hills with Peaks (to make Peaks=Mesa more prevalent)
elif pPlot.isHills():
pPlot.setPlotType(PlotTypes.PLOT_PEAK, false, false)
pPlot.setTerrainType(peak, false, false)


it seems that mostly the remaining peaks without the feature are the ones on rugged terrain,

it seems that mostly the remaining peaks without the feature are the ones on rugged terrain,

This could be related to another issue with Archipelago.py - you get Rugged/Sink terrain which should not be a possible combination since there is a code block which should replace it.

This vista problem bothers me. I have posted on this thread to learn more.

The guy who had Vista 64 and had to give up said he could play FFH2 no problem.

you mean this?

if pPlot.isPeak():
pPlot.setFeatureType(peakfeat, 0)

and sure ill make the proper tests

No, just the one line pPlot.setFeatureType(peakfeat,0)

thanks,

but still no, few few peaks without.

If there are any vista users watching this thread, could you please try an experiment? We have learned that most or all vista users must choose "run as administrator" to load the mod. This is because our mod is built on top of BUG, and BUG reads and writes a lot of ini files to the top directory of the mod. The recommended location for installing the mod is inside Program Files, and vista does not allow normal user programs to write files inside Program Files.

The BUG team has a solution; could you please try this and see if it works?

Go to your My Games\Beyond The Sword folder and create a folder called "BUG Mod". Inside that folder create a folder called "UserSettings". Then try running the game without "run as administrator". If that works, please let us know and we can put that instruction into the main install page and possibly the install script.

See this post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8594518&postcount=1988) for the instruction; I have a followup at the current date in that thread.

I would test, but AFAIK my standard Vista account has administrator privileges, so doesn't that mean that I can't *not* run the dame as administrator?

Is Dune Wars 1.6 BTS 3.17 compatible, or do I need to patch to BTS 3.19 to play it?

of course you need to update to 3.19,

why haven't you done it so far??

The tech flavors seem to make a difference; the AI gets Defense tactics pretty early, and uses cash from goody huts to upgrade soldiers to infantry, so its considerably harder to blitz them.

Great, now i will make break in my HUD advance (its alot of work really hehe) and will get to testing!!!!!!!

Odd, again Paul founded Mahdi but there alot turns passed and some his cities are Mahdi and he still in Imperial.

Found Bug SL09

When building (was Ecaz) Offworld Landing NW if you finish them both at same turn you will get popup only once. Contract is lost and you cant build more . So i have 1 resource only.
I think if you build tem within different turns it will solve problem.

Also it cost 1 hammer - is it supposed to be so? I think old cost is better b/c of this bug at least.

Also i like hammer costs, but Paul still kickable 1vs1 on immortal. Sharing big chunk of land with him and biting him with flanking quads.

When building (was Ecaz) Offworld Landing NW if you finish them both at same turn you will get popup only once. Contract is lost and you cant build more . So i have 1 resource only.

I haven't tested this in the current patch, but in past, when 2 landing stages finish in the same turn, 1 of them triggers a contract that turn, and then the other triggers a contract the next turn.

Also it cost 1 hammer - is it supposed to be so?
Yeah, I thought this was kinda weird. Any reason for this?
The AI prioritizes them anyway even at full cost, because it loves trade yield bonus buildings.

but Paul still kickable 1vs1 on immortal
So? If you play an aggressive leader, you can blitz a non-aggressive leader in vanilla without too much trouble if you start near them.
The AI has never really been able to deal with harassment strategies, its always been pretty easy to choke them with pillaging.

I playing not aggressive leader

And now it wont trigger landing stage next turn :(
i passed turn, no popup and its not buildable anymore. 1 resource thats it.
Loaded autosave - built 2nd next turn - all worked
dunno why.

of course you need to update to 3.19,

why haven't you done it so far??Thank you.

Because it will break a number of other mods that I play which have not yet been updated to 3.19. When they update, then I'll update my copy of BTS. Also, when the patch came out, I was playing Galactic Civilizations II, and so didn't notice. I just came back to Civ a couple weeks ago.

Ok Paul was easy but on immortal i'd say its interesting for me to play. There is a challenge.

I have also feedback on new Ecazi Smuggler - i think its cost too hight. It cost 150 hammers and makes 135 gold. Good transormation for Offworld trade , where roller cost 135 gold having 195 cost of hammers. I am not sure thats good rate compared to wealth building..... If you produce wealth it converts hammers at what rate?

Thank you.

Because it will break a number of other mods that I play which have not yet been updated to 3.19. When they update, then I'll update my copy of BTS. Also, when the patch came out, I was playing Galactic Civilizations II, and so didn't notice. I just came back to Civ a couple weeks ago.

Welcome! I am curious to know which other mods have not updated to 3.19 yet. Are these mods still in active development? I have updated Fury Road to 3.19 but never released it. There is a funny lighting effect on my system but not on other peoples' systems.

I am curious to know which other mods have not updated to 3.19 yet.

Warhammer :-)
We're working on it.

There are also plenty of mods that are no longer in active development, but that people still want to play. They'll never update to 3.19, so you may as well play them to death before patching.

Mmmmmmm Seems my pool isnt updating again (HW units) :(
Isn't all fixes been integrated into 1.6.3 including koma's fix?? i didnt installed letter patches, i had 1.6.2 before. (1.6 > 1.6.1 > 1.6.3 installation)

Should i install that fix and then again 1.6.3?

I cant find how to fix that
1.6.1 > 1.6.3 > HW pool not updating :(

Should i try to install letter patches? i lost track of them :(

also may be its just Ecazi bug. dunno.

Well game quuuuuuuuuuuuuite challenging. Seems difficulty comes closer to vanilla. +0.5 to +1 level adjustment is quite nice. :)
In ffh if you build stack of fire mages games stops to be interesting even on deity :P.

Last changes discussed between me and Ahriman + tech priorities adjustments are working very well it seems, and thats quite nice. Rush is balanced, AI gets Infanries early, and while i killed Paul (almost) with quads, it took alot of effort and planning and micromanaging, and atm i am struggling very hard (very) by enormous stacks of Irulan which DoWed me. Sure i lost quite alot of units sieging Paul and when was DoWed i had remains of my quad stack damaged, so i didnt killed those gunships and transports. When she unloaded transports it became very serious problem ,because of stack composition (Rockets - anti Vehicle bonus + Bladesmans - CR) and quantity (alot).

ahh gc2,

well i always wanted to play it, but im against games that have no multi player, specially if they are turn based.


and yeah, plenty of modders went by the site by the years, and plenty of great mods left behind.

Welcome! I am curious to know which other mods have not updated to 3.19 yet. Are these mods still in active development? I have updated Fury Road to 3.19 but never released it. There is a funny lighting effect on my system but not on other peoples' systems.
My main concern at this time is RFC, the one that comes with the BtS disk. In the patch thread, people report that the 3.19 breaks it, so I'm holding back for now. Next BUG War is another one I use, but that's not in active development. Also, at the moment I'm playing Fury Road, and so I don't want to break my saves. Eventually I will have to patch since I will want to play FfH2 again and try some of the new modmods for it. Heck, I bought BtS for the sole purpose of playing FfH2!

@Keldath: Final Frontier wasn't enough to sate my desire for a 4x, so I bought GC2 for a change of pace. GC2 is a decent game, but I still like M002 better.

As for lack of MP, that was a conscious design decision on their part to make a better SP experience, since their surveys indicate the bulk of their customers only play SP. IIRC, they are thinking of a MP expansion for GC3 (should they make GC3). This way only people who want to play MP need buy the extra expansion.

we need to play more DW multiplayer, just a side note. DW is very potent MP wise (more than FFH, i am sure - bc of more even civs.)
Just a side note, if we will, that will take game to next level , just need to find OOS issues if any, and then pvp games can be really nice thing.

Another issue with city names SL10

I started huge map with 5 teams (ordos+ix, harkonnen, atreides+freemen, corrino, Btl + BG + Ecaz)
3 in each, as ix. (total 15 players)

(This way i'll see behaviour of ai and as well with test huge map.)

The issue that my Ordos ally (Roma) capitol named New Bandalong.
Seems because certain civs have not 1 player but more all things messed up.
But its very odd that Ordos have BTl capitol name, while BTl in game.

Also bc DW have only 9 civs playing with multiple leaders for 1 civ is quite reasonable. It can be also insteresting RP/lore wise.

Mey be need to assign more than 1 capitol name for civ? (lets say 3 and each game you will have random one of 3 name for capitol)


Edit: entered worldbuilder - all names messed up totally. Atreides capitol named Fogwood Labding, Harkonnen - Imperial Basin for Baron, Chapterhouse for Rabban.

I run DW as a administrator and it works. It is strange because BtS works normally without this kind tricks. I know on the begining was a problem with Vista solved later by patch but why you have it this problem agian?

Second I can't download DW 1.6.3 civfanatics page can not open. Give link to download server with files thanks.

Second I can't download DW 1.6.3 civfanatics page can not open. Give link to download server with files thanks.


http://download791.mediafire.com/yn53ekew133g/mdzn40zuaew/dune-wars-patch-1-6-3.exe

Heck, I bought BtS for the sole purpose of playing FfH2!

You and many others. I have probably, in my life, played 3-4 games of vanilla BTS.

Has anyone seen an issue when fighting the Harkonnen where your units suddenly jump back from where they are into your own cultural borders?

Here's my theory as to what is happening:
I have a stack outside a Harkonnen city all ready to attack. A Harkonnen unit attacks the stack and wins the combat. A Harkonnen slave is created *within* my stack. For some reason the game decides that this is not a tolerable situation and teleports my entire stack back into my own cultural border.

Is this a bug or is something else happening that might be teleporting my stack back? It makes it quite hard to take Harkonnen cities whatever it is.

A Harkonnen slave is created *within* my stack.

This is the biggest problem with the current implementation of slavery.
Though we've discussed various possibilities like creating slaves in the nearest city or nearest area in cultural borders, even if we don't do any of those we should *definitely* have a design where the slave is be created in the stack of the unit who won the fight that created it, not in the stack of the loser.
Slavery in FFH and other mods creates the slave in the tile of the winner (who owns the slave unit), not the loser (who does not own the slave unit).

Its very weird with the current implementation.

No-one replying on my very important post so i repost it here
Seems it just got lost inside those posts in this thread

Mmmmmmm Seems my pool isnt updating again (HW units)
Isn't all fixes been integrated into 1.6.3 including koma's fix?? i didnt installed letter patches, i had 1.6.2 before. (1.6 > 1.6.1 > 1.6.3 installation)

Should i install that fix and then again 1.6.3?

I cant find how to fix that
1.6.1 > 1.6.3 > HW pool not updating

Should i try to install letter patches? i lost track of them

also may be its just Ecazi bug. dunno.

I *think* my pool seems to be updating.

I'll reinstall civ now..... then DL patch 1.6.1 then 1.63 again and will try.

May be its just Ecaz - i didnt tried other civ.

I think i 'll do that now.

Its unlikely to be faction specific, I don't think there is any faction-specific code atm.

Since my XP box is having graphic issues, I've been playing w/my wife's Vista machine.

However, I downloaded Dune Wars under my non-administrator user but I've had no crashes related to Vista. I'm wondering, however, if another level to ask people is whether or not they are playing the game loaded on their machine or via Stream.

Has anyone seen an issue when fighting the Harkonnen where your units suddenly jump back from where they are into your own cultural borders?

This was reported by one other player but they could not reproduce it. It seems serious enough to try some experimentation. I cannot see why this should cause your stack to jump back. It has also been suggested that when Harkonnens are attacking in enemy territory, the slave should jump back outside enemy borders. I will look into both of these together.

I run DW as a administrator and it works. It is strange because BtS works normally without this kind tricks.

One of the modcomps inside DW is called BUG. BUG reads *and writes* many ini files in the top level directory of the mod. Unfortunately vista does not allow this. One workaround is to go to your My Games\Beyond The Sword folder and create a folder called "BUG Mod". Inside that folder create a folder called "UserSettings". Then try running the game without "run as administrator".

Could you try that and report if it works? I will try to get the BUG mod team to fix this, or perhaps the install script author to create the directory automatically.

I have a stack outside a Harkonnen city all ready to attack. A Harkonnen unit attacks the stack and wins the combat. A Harkonnen slave is created *within* my stack. For some reason the game decides that this is not a tolerable situation and teleports my entire stack back into my own cultural border.

I am not able to reproduce this. I start a game as Harkonnen and DOW some other civ. Using WB, I place a stack of enemy units inside my borders and give myself a bigger stack of stronger units, say, 5 devastators on 3 infantry. Now I attack with my devastators one by one. I wipe out the soldiers and capture several slaves, but the enemy stack never teleports away. Is there some other step missing?

Not a bug, just an observation. I reloaded 1.6 with the music back to patch C and now everything is going great except for the occasional tile where the improvement isn't shown (like cottages and wind traps on certain mountains for some reason)

The problem I have is the Revolution mod that was added. I LOVE this mod but the problem I'm running into is on a standard map you only have or (2?) civs not represented. Well after a round of revolution, they enter the game. Thus you cannot create vassals! So after as the Beast Rabban I conqueror the hated Atreidies, I could not then make those cities into a vassal as they were on a different land mass. Now I'm "stuck" with a bunch of cities that do nothing but revolt! :mad:

Plus w/o the revolutions icon on the tool bar, it's a little harder to see in one chart which cities are having issues and which aren't.

Plus, I agree with who ever posted a request for a better way to know when a sandstorm or worm destroyed one of your improvements.

Beyond that, the game seems very stable and aside from the occasional hidden improvement, it's very enjoyable.

The problem I have is the Revolution mod that was added.

Thanks for the feedback. The revolutions options are off by default, and DW doesn't provide any way to turn them on. But sometimes if you switch from one mod to another, an option you used in one mod may accidentally correspond to one of the revolution options in this mod. You can turn them off manually by going into your ini file My Documents/My Games/Beyond the Sword/CivilizationIV, open the CivilizationIV.ini file in notepad, go down to game options, eg

; Game Options
GameOptions = biglongnumber

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

Thanks for the feedback. The revolutions options are off by default, and DW doesn't provide any way to turn them on. But sometimes if you switch from one mod to another, an option you used in one mod may accidentally correspond to one of the revolution options in this mod. You can turn them off manually by going into your ini file My Documents/My Games/Beyond the Sword/CivilizationIV, open the CivilizationIV.ini file in notepad, go down to game options, eg

Hmmm, I know some mods say a way to clear stuff like that is do a Play Now! and just go for a totally random game and that will clear out any hidden options from other mods.

Anyway, I like the rebellion mods, I just think that it implies the need for more factions or at least minor leaders of factions such as the Orbis mod has to allow more vassals and rebel leaders.

Come to think of it, the Legends of Revolution game I had played previously also must have turned on the "minor leaders" flag as well since all the players started as minor leaders and I don't think that's a Dune Wars option either.

We're not using the Revolutions options. We're using the Revolutions mod because it has a few other nice things, like Influence-Driven War (combat victories and pillaging changes cultural control).

This was reported by one other player but they could not reproduce it. It seems serious enough to try some experimentation. I cannot see why this should cause your stack to jump back. It has also been suggested that when Harkonnens are attacking in enemy territory, the slave should jump back outside enemy borders. I will look into both of these together.

I just had this happen to me last night. I had a mixed stack of units inside the Harkonnen territory, they attacked my stack and when they killed one of my units (it may not have been the first, I think it may have been the 2nd unit they killed but I don't remember for sure) the rest of the stack jumped out of their territory. The land units went to a 1 plot piece of unowned territory just outside their borders, but the thopters, suspensors, and carryalls jumped to the adjacent plot which was desert waste (unowned also). That's right - the stack was split and went to two separate plots.

I have no idea why.

Edit: let me revise that: I have no idea why they jumped, but I assume they were split so that land domain units went to land and sea domain units went to sea.

I had a mixed stack of units inside the Harkonnen territory, they attacked my stack and when they killed one of my units (it may not have been the first, I think it may have been the 2nd unit they killed but I don't remember for sure) the rest of the stack jumped out of their territory.

I agree this is happening, but I cannot make it happen on my own. I described my steps a few posts back. As Harkonnen, I cannot make an enemy stack teleport like this even though my attacks generate slaves. Is it possible that it only happens if the Harkonnen is an AI? This scenario is harder to set up.

One of the modcomps inside DW is called BUG. BUG reads *and writes* many ini files in the top level directory of the mod. Unfortunately vista does not allow this. One workaround is to go to your My Games\Beyond The Sword folder and create a folder called "BUG Mod". Inside that folder create a folder called "UserSettings". Then try running the game without "run as administrator".

Could you try that and report if it works?
For me it doesn't work.

One workaround is to go to your My Games\Beyond The Sword folder and create a folder called "BUG Mod". Inside that folder create a folder called "UserSettings". Then try running the game without "run as administrator".

For me it doesn't work.

That is bad news, but thank you for reporting. This is the #1 reported problem for Dune Wars, and I am actively discussing with the BUG component team how to avoid the problem. Please see this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=340727) for details. For now, all we can do is to list this as a known problem on the installation page (done), and as soon as any newcomer reports a crash during xml loading, we should suggest this.

(redirected from succession game thread)

Where should religions be documented? In vanilla, the religion pedia entry shows the prerequisite tech and the effect; the only written text is background; it does not list the related buildings. Vanilla does not have any weird founding / spread effects.

Today in DW, in the religion pedia, I have listed some bullets of the game effects. Several players have asked questions indicating they did not find this information, so we need to make this information easier to find.

Should the buildings be listed in the religion pedia page?

Should we rename some of the buildings? In DW, we have chosen thematic names for the buildings, and therefore it is hard to remember which buildings go to which religion. In vanilla, some of the buildings have random names, especially the shrines, so the same problem exists.

Instead of the religion pedia entries, should we instead have a section in the Dune Wars Concepts tab? More players might find it there.

Is there some other more obvious place we can put religion information?

Instead of the religion pedia entries, should we instead have a section in the Dune Wars Concepts tab? More players might find it there.

Why not both?

Should the buildings be listed in the religion pedia page?

This would be nice, particularly if they link off to the relevant building pages. We could even add a link to the missionary/special units, Mahdi Zealot, etc.

Should we rename some of the buildings? In DW, we have chosen thematic names for the buildings, and therefore it is hard to remember which buildings go to which religion. In vanilla, some of the buildings have random names, especially the shrines, so the same problem exists.

As you say, vanilla has the same issue with the Shrines. I would rather keep the flavourful names, but have the list of buildings associated with each religion well documented.

Why not both?

In general, documentation should never be repeated. This guarantees that somewhere along the line, somebody will update it in one place but not the other place, causing a contradiction. Now that I have added the civilization hover help, I am tempted to remove the Unique Abilities section of the pedia for just this reason. I have to update two documentation places for each change.

Of course you can link to the same documentation in multiple places; I could write a DW Concepts entry for religion which only says, Please see the religion pedia entries for more details on religions.

This would be nice, particularly if they link off to the relevant building pages. We could even add a link to the missionary/special units, Mahdi Zealot, etc.

I can easily add the unit and building names in plain text. I tried some experiments and there is no way to have the plain text fields *link* to other pedia entries unsing standard blue underlining. When the pedia entries want links, what they do is build a scrolling box which shows the icons instead. For example, in the pedia for a civ, the list of UUs is a scrolling box of icons. It would be a good enhancement to change the religion sevopedia to put a scrolling box of the buildings and units enabled. But for now, we will have to make do with a plain text list.

Still, I would like to find an additional way to guide players to read the religion pedia text. I can add a hint to guide them there. I don't want to put duplicate information into the DW Concepts tab. It seems silly to put a one line section into the concepts tab which guides them to another pedia section, but maybe it is worthwhile. What do you think?

guarantees that somewhere along the line, somebody will update it in one place but not the other place, causing a contradiction.

Good point.

I could write a DW Concepts entry for religion which only says, Please see the religion pedia entries for more details on religions.
With links, this should be fine.

seems silly to put a one line section into the concepts tab which guides them to another pedia section, but maybe it is worthwhile.
I think its utility outweights any silliness. It makes sense to me; the Dunewars concept is a central repository that *should* link elsewhere. You can just have a one liner that says somethnig like "many of the religions of Dune have unique characteristics that are not immediately apparent; make sure to read their unique descriptiosn here <link>"

It makes sense to me; the Dunewars concept is a central repository that *should* link elsewhere. You can just have a one liner that says somethnig like "many of the religions of Dune have unique characteristics that are not immediately apparent; make sure to read their unique descriptiosn here <link>"

There is no way to put a link in plain pedia text, but I will add the section and the one liner. Also a hint with basically the same text.

I agree with all said, and i think no need to rename buildings. In DW religions are different. Difference in names make a good serve. Its not tetris, not FPA. People need to know to think alittle before starting their game of Civ or any its sequels/mods.

I redirected my reply to Ahriman from our sucession game here:


?
How is the presence of scout thopters (transports) an indication of weak AI?
We blitzed them in two turns, they didn't have time to bring in any more defenders.

Three defensive units in a city is not normally unreasonable, its just that we beelined for very powerful assault troops, and these troops are perhaps a little too cheap/strong.


If you find str 1 transport/scout units stationed in capital is good thing. then nvm

really, if we make in-depth look, there should go a change.

Str 1 units. Movement 2. Why the hells those should be in numbers in capital?
Why there should be too much of them?

AI need tweaking. It need some balance between condsidering it a transport unit and considering it a scout unit. I know its hardest SDK change, but it should be done at some point. Few 1 Str scout thopters in capital. Isnt that stupid? How much it needs to move it's settlers? To scout rivals? Less. I have no doubt there much more in other place. Why stalling early growth by building such amounts of them, and hten just stationing them in capital, till caryalls? Isnt that stupid? I am sure it is.
And at some point it should be mastered. Its SDK/Python level change, but if AI will build less scout thopters and still will spread settlers at same rate, and will try to get to suspensors earlier using its production on better things, and better defence - it will be much better.
There shoul dbe balance. 3 Units (i dont count those thopters) in capital which is border city as well - is too few.
It is capital. Full of Wonders, if you didnt noticed. BTl have 4 cities. That is stupid they have few thopters with str 1 stationed in capital. This is VERY stupid.
We dont need to look at AI from perspective of its current limitations.
If there is a target, it could be achieved. To say its good for him, where you understand that he was able to build less of those thopters in favor of 2-3 more protective-trait defence units? To say its good that AI not defending Wonderspammed capital? 3 defence units? 1 of those is Quad. Thats bad, in my opinnion.

There is no moaning without proposition. 1st Scout Thopter should be not Defence-ability unit. Just no military str at all. It should be not a unit which AI will consider as "able to defend a thing". (like worker). If it possible to change AI vision of Scout thopter without changing its strength - that will be better, but if not - removing str from scout thopter unit will improve quality of AIs defence. AI is good at offense now. But at defense it fails miserably. And as i see, i see stupid behavior. Please dont call me stupid, denying my saying. I just make a notification of important matter to the mod's quality.