Dune Wars Mod

The sound add-on on the mediafire link need to be fix.

hey guys,

im sorry i haven't discussed yet on the units - rovers and hovers,

for now i leave this to you,

but dont worry , ill address it later.

right now,
im waiting and concentrating on getting the new revdcm woc for patch 3/19.

after that i will focus my attention on the units, values costs and tech positions.

in addition i will renforce the unique corporations system, to give much more meaningful gold bonus , as i said - it will be the prime gold part, for now its the best way.
ill make sure the game economy will work well and be balanced, aswell as the unit cost support.

as i said before, ill make that some units will cost money rather then hammers, this will give money another aspect - and that will mean - more emphasis on spice acquirement.

i have much plans, along with everything you guys write here,

but, first things first,
gotta wait on revdcm 3/19.


also the leader art looks very impressive, keep it up guys, though, personally i prefer irulan of the 1984 movie, but...its your mod as it is mind, so im going with the flow

have a good week end my dear friends.

****
darkedone02,
tanks , im aware,
ill remove it and next release ill do a new sound addon with more sounds.
thanks.

Today's post is about how to tune up the early game economy. I am pretty stuck, because I don't know how to tune it up.

I autoplayed one game of standard RevolutionDCM, small map, prince difficulty, 250 turns, then I wrote down some statistics from the finance advisor. On average, each civ had 120 tiles worked for 200 commerce, 50 domestic trade, 20 foreign trade, total commerce in the range of 240-480. Besides commerce, the average gold income from other sources (corps, buildings, etc) averaged around 35.

A Dune Wars game with the same settings gives much lower stats. 25 tiles worked for 15 commerce, 5 domestic trade, 30 foreign trade, total commerce in the range 30-80, other income around 15. So about 6x less tiles worked and 6x less total commerce. That is why my economy keeps going in the toilet.

I tried some changes which made a marginal improvement.

* Fixed a bug which has existed since Dune Wars 1.0 where a cottage would not expand to a village. (Spelling error in improvementsinfo)
* Added "springs" feature like oasis (3 food, 2 gold), replacing spice tubers
* Increased gold of windtrap from 0 to 2, still gives 2 food
* Coast gives 2 gold instead of 1
* Lighthouse gives +1 gold on coast instead of +1 food
* Mine improvements give 2,3,4 hammers instead of 1,2,3
* Forest terrain (mushroom looking terrain called "Tubers" gives 1 hammer insted of 2

Now I get 30 tiles worked for 40 commerce, 5 domestic trade, 25 foreign trade, total commerce in the range 40-160, other income around 20. The tile commerce is higher and the total commerce is higher but still low by like 5x.

In the RevDCM game, the most common tile worked is a coast for 2 food, 2 gold. As long as there is one food improvement, a city can grow steadily and get 2 gold per tile worked. In the DW game, the growth improvement lets many tiles have 4 food but no gold, but the food does not seem to be going into more settlers. The total number of tiles worked is still quite small.

I can try some more experiments, but I don't really know what I am doing, so the improvements will be random. Does anybody have some insights into how to have a stronger effect, and get the total commerce up to a reasonable value?

It seems to me the problem is largely at source in that there are very few tiles producing commerce compared with BTS vanilla.

1) We do not have Rivers/Fresh Water lakes adding commerce to otherwise commerce-less tiles. It is not appropriate to have Rivers in Dune, but we need to compensate for that somehow.

2) We need to do a detailed analysis of our Bonuses and how there compare with vanilla. This means really breaking down Civ4BonusInfos.xml. Using chipotle cheat Ctrl-Z on a few Dune Wars maps and a few BTS maps I noticed some stuff.

BTS has bonuses like Gold, Wine, Marble, Incense - all produce commerce and all can be improved to produce lots more commerce with early techs. Consider that a Gold with Mine produces 7 commerce alone. Now I don't think we want just to create like-for-like version of these because we want to emphasize the importance of spice. So thoughts on this:

+ At the beginning of the game there should be a *LOT* of spice already over the desert (coast and deep desert/ocean). (Thinking back to Dune 2 - there were large portions of the desert covered with lovely orange spice) It should be as if a lot of your spice blows have already gone off everywhere. I know you can handle bonus placement in the Python mapscripts so maybe this is the way forward. I would happily see 40-50% of the desert covered in spice at the beginning of the game.

+ Provided a fair amount of this spice is on the coastal tiles then it should be possible to exploit its value early on. In general, you should be able to get a decent income from simply working spice tiles early on and as you progress through the technology tree you can build better and better improvements/harvesters that increase the commerce from spice tiles more and more.

+ When doing my Civ4Col mod I spent a while balancing the prevelance of resources in CIV4BonusInfos.xml:

<iConstAppearance>,<iRandApp1>,<iRandApp2> control the amount of each bonus that appears proportionate to the size of map - the first being a constant amount and the other two random additonal amounts.

<bFlatlands>,<bHills>,<TerrainBooleans>, <FeatureBooleans> and <FeatureTerrainBooleans> are also key. There control the terrains on which it is possible for each bonus to appear. bFlatlands and bHills control whether it can appear on flatlands and/or hills (suprisingly). The other boolean tags list the terrains, features and terrain/feature combos on which it is possible for that bonus to appear.

<iPlacementOrder> controls the priority order in which bonuses are laid down

It seems that the effects of the bonuses have all been switched around, but prevalence/where they appear has not been. So I think some quality time with CIV4BonusInfos.xml would have big benefit.

3) We could bring back Roads and call them Tunnels (I can create some subtle graphic) to have better internal trade.

4) From your analysis it sounds like maybe there is a problem with expansion (the number of worked tiles is low), but maybe the lack of commerce holds back the expansion so it is a chicken and egg.

Your analysis seems like a good way of tackling the issue to me. You could ask around to see if people have techniques for balancing/tuning economy I suppose, but often figuring out your own technique works best.

hey guys,

im very happy to see your brain storming on economy.

dont worry, as i said, ill find the way to balance the economy.

im not sure i wanna have roads back in game - currect me if im wrong but i think theres a more unique game feel without it.
i can make more buildings that gives bonuses, change the civics, improvements, reducing maintenance and more,
there's tons of possibilities,
next release, that will be 3.19 compatible, will have some serious changes to economy and units.

i guess the eta for this new version will be next week, depends on revdcms new release.

Well, here it is: the Sandworm. If you're wondering why the download is big it's because I've bundled in the terrain wind sounds I did - was too lazy to unpick all the XML changes - the actual worm should not be too bad. I can probably optimise it further.

1) The worm has Effects, Attachables (constant Effects - the dust cloud) and Sounds.
2) Wormsign has been made as interesting as I could make it.
3) Replaced the Ocean Loop movement thing will a sliding through sand sound.
4) There are much better combat animations including the die animation - these can still be improved and more variety added.
5) I have gone to town on the particle effects - let me know if you have performance issues. My general rule is: if my trusty Pentium 4 PC can handle it, then most people will be OK. Civ4 is 4 years old after all.
6) Fixed the Atreides spelling thing.

I've put a lot into this (it's a labour of love clearly ) - and it can still be better. Usually, the best thing is to revist a unit after several weeks and refine it then. Until then there are plenty of other graphics in this mod calling for my attention.

If you want to give the unit a workout, give another civ loads of Bursegs/Devastators on a coastal hill, give yourself loads of sandworms and let battle commence...

Let me know if you have any issues. Enjoy.

@Keldath: I think you should use MediaFire for the main mod as well as the sound pack. It's heaps better than RapidShare. The only thing is there's a 100MB limit on MediaFire.

Download Link

one word :

Amazing !


SUPERB WORK.

That's three words...

Thanks. Hopefully this can be the start of giving the mod a really Dunish graphical feel.

yeash,
you guys are bringing this mod to be and feel like dune.

worm riders, thopter units, unit colors,
more sounds,
a good spice based economy,
more houses,
can bring this mod to a higher levels.

we will continue on working and improving this as much as we can.

i really hope that revdcm woc 3.19 will be out soon, im eager to start working on version 1.2, this is the highlights for it:

- add all the patches you guys made for 1.1
- greatly balance and work out the economy
- change unit values according to your discussions.
- add 5 more houses - im stockpileing unique units, you guys can start bring on suggestions for houses, leaders, units and unique buildings.

optional:
add more :
techs (10 or so)
buildings
special combo units
perhaps mercenaries.


thanks for of you guys for being on this project.


***
ok, ill make mediafire as a main dl link from v 1.2.

We will need some equivalent to melee and archer units.

Click to expand...

We definitely need to have melee units. They are under-represented for a Dune mod.

1) There are probably more references to melee combat than ranged combat in the books. One of the unique things about Dune is that combination of future and ancient fighting techniques. Knife fighting is vital since ranged combat is negated by personal force fields (shields). In terms of Rock-Paper-Scissors it might be more interesting to make the knife wielding troops the counter for the heavy shielded lasgun troops rather than the other way around. Whereas, in vanilla, melee warfare effectively becomes obsolete, shields and the intense melee training of the fighters mean that melee units should have a role right through the late game IMO.

2) The issue on Arrakis is further complicated by the fact that personal shields and the use of lasguns attracts the worms. Maybe melee units could be allowed on the sand sea.

3) The Fremen use crysknives made from the teeth of the sandworm. I would like to have a Fremen or Fedaykin unit that uses a crysknife. It's a cool concept.

4) I've been thinking about the Sardukaar and I would rather the standard Sardukaar be a melee unit too - fighting with a sword - perhaps using Samurai animations. We can always have a Sardukaar Lasgunner unit as well so that we satisfy both fans of the books and the Lynch film. (Eventually, it would be nice to have faction specific versions of a lot of units.)

@Keldath:
In terms of new Houses, what are you thinking of adding? I think it would be more interesting perhaps to keep the houses we have now, but focus on making them play very differently. I'm thinking similar to Fall from Heaven where many factions have unique traits and mechanics. Playing the Fremen should feel very different from playing Harkonnen or Corrino.

In terms of new houses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Family_Houses_in_Dune

i wanna have at least 15 factions to be able to play with,
cause this is a civ4 mod after all , and its much more fun to have a bit more veriety in civilizations to play with.

and ofcourse - we can still make them be very differently.

The new sandworm looks awesome! It is a big step up beyond the huge cobra. On the "win" animation (whatever it's actually called), could it dive forwards into the square it will be occupying? It looks a little odd to be going into "reverse" back down the hole.

deliverator said:

2) We need to do a detailed analysis of our Bonuses and how there compare with vanilla. This means really breaking down Civ4BonusInfos.xml. Using chipotle cheat Ctrl-Z on a few Dune Wars maps and a few BTS maps I noticed some stuff.

Click to expand...

These are all good points. I have added a routine to print the commerce stats for each player every 10 turns so I can see a little more detail. Still, it is time-consuming and many changes produce unexpected side-effects. I thought I had a lead on a big improvement, because the only unit you can move a settler onto another continent with comes at hovering tech, at tier 5. I moved it down to tier 2 with a much lower cost. That made things worse, according to the total commerce statistics. At least part of the problem is that now several civs begin spamming light hovers, for no apparent reason, and put all their money into that.

I would happily see 40-50% of the desert covered in spice at the beginning of the game.

Click to expand...

The spice blows weren't working quite the way I expected; I changed the code to another equivalent method and now it is working (shrug). On turn 3, all the initial blows explode and there is a good amount of spice. Not 40%, more like 25%, but enough for everybody to have some. I can now see significant commerce coming from spice.

3) We could bring back Roads and call them Tunnels (I can create some subtle graphic) to have better internal trade.

Click to expand...

The TerrainTrades flag in techinfos connects everything without roads; the problem is that the civs have fewer cities so there is less internal trade opportunity. This is also part of the chicken and egg problem; if we increase the number of cities founded this should increase on its own.

(EDIT: this patch is obsolete. If you have been following the links along from the earlier patches, you are close to the end! Please see this post for patch 1.1.4.)

OK, here is unofficial patch 1.1.3. The main point is to incorporate Deliverator's sandworm, koma13's AI improvement, and the various economy tweaking I have been doing. You can install this over 1.1, or 1.1.1, or 1.1.2; it includes all the needed files.

AI changes
* DLL updated to koma13's new version in this post; improvements to all-terrain AI
* All leaders now prefer cottages, so more cottages get built

Graphics changes
* Merged awesome sandworm unit from deliverator, also his ambient sounds
* Included new grid terrains from koma13, no more crashes with grids
* Crisper leaderheads: Emperor Shaddam, Irulan, Feyd Rautha
* New tech buttons: Mentats, Desert Culture
* New resource buttons: Creosote, Saguaro

Map changes
* Increase chance of soostone, ore, crystal appearing
* Changed spice tubers to oasis, "springs", 2 food, 1 gold. They show up very often on the map, and I cannot tell how to control the frequency.
* Tubers (looks like mushrooms, appears like forest) to only +1 hammer
* Spice blows can happen on coast, not just ocean; fixed bug in "freezing"
* Coast now gives 2 gold and 1 hammer, instead of 1 gold

Improvement changes
* Fixed bug existing from Dune Wars version 1.0, cottage did not grow to hamlet. One strong reason why cottages were never built!
* Spice now gives corporation 2 commerce plus 2 gold per unit
* Windtrap now additionally gives 2 commerce
* Mine improvements now give 2,3,4 hammers instead of 1,2,3
* Lighthouse (weather scanner) now gives +1 gold in coast instead of +1 food
* Can no longer build desert refinery outside cultural borders
* Farm improvements now require irrigation (IrrigatedYieldChange)

Unit changes
* All hovers: no defensive bonus, not allowed on peaks, cannot capture cities
* Light Hover: rename to Hover Escort, -50 city atk/def, cost 60 (was 40)
* Hover Transport: defensive only
* Sand APC: rename to Hover Sledge, change strength/move from 8/4 to 6/3, defensive only; its role is to carry armour units, the same way the Hover Transport carries foot units

You can get it from here:

http://jendaveallen.com/fury-road/dune-wars-patch-1-1-3.zip (12 MB)

A quick patch for the sandworm, I've uploaded the whole thing again just to stop any confusion.

+ Fixed loopstep and endstep sounds - I was getting an audio error.
+ Better order and action sounds.

(By the way, my XML has the worm rider using the same graphics as the worm. I am not suggesting that we do this - we can keep the balista-cobra for now if you prefer.)

Edit: Sod's law - just missed patch 1.1.3!

On the "win" animation (whatever it's actually called), could it dive forwards into the square it will be occupying? It looks a little odd to be going into "reverse" back down the hole.

Click to expand...

This is probably a limitation I can't get around. After winning, the game seems to play the unit's fortify animation in reverse. This is the sort of thing you don't really notice until you are working on units this big and dramatic. I can probably do better strike animations with 3 variations in total at some point.

great work you guys !

)

Had a quick blast at the spice. I'd like to make it a bit more blended in and maybe differentiate the trace spice from spice a bit more. What do people think?

Looks good. If you put a variety of these on a map and then zoom out, can you tell them apart? That would be a key goal.

Economy is hard. So instead, I just got some screenshots from the Children of Dune miniseries, including Scytale, a different Navigator shot, and some tech icons. Now for disk 2.

very nice deliverator!

i like it,

wish it was possible to have an area of spice - meaning like a forest mechanics, so the tiles would appear connected .

heres an idea,
spice area should be only on deep desert,
and the way to get it is by building a " sea city" that can work it,
in the sea city you can build buildings or units -maybe just a few or whatever,
in order to get the spice - a city must work it.

just something i thought about.

david,
good work on the patch.

Here's my spice. I've found what I think is a good compromise for the 'natural looking' spice field problem. Basically I've made the bonus graphics slightly bigger than the tiles. Because of the transparency you get smooth overlap. The amount of overlap can be easily changed.

I'm thinking we can make three bonuses for each of the three spice densities and then we can have a different tile graphic for each. This should result in a pretty decent looking spice field.

There is an obvious tradeoff between getting the spice fields to look natural and have them recognisable when zoomed out. I think if we can the amount of visual density right, it should work OK.

I also did a quick reskin of the sand storm - it's a bit invisible in the screenshot but with animation it looks OK. I'm trying to go for the quick wins after spending a while on the worm.

There are quite a lot of redundant files with both the spice resource and sand storm that I have removed.

Interesting comment about spice being like forest.

What if spice proliferated or "blew" like forest growing and was "chopped" by harvester units, and instead of hammers it provided gold. Then techs could increase the gold created (like chopping).

That would make the mod more dunelike and possibly solve the economy problem.

*Disclaimer* I cannot do python so I don't know if this is even possible.


Also, the barbs need to be toned down. There are more smugglers then civs on the map. Worms and random Fremen should be the biggest threats, but not attacking cities constantly.