Dune Wars 1.3 Feedback

Ahriman said:

Also, I'm not seeing any of desert hawks or hares, or coffee or any of the plantation bonuses. Do the map scripts generate these?

Click to expand...

THe map script does generate those resources. But they are extremely rare to none existant.

Well, Spice Coffee and Spice Bread were fremen staples and shouldn't be too hard to make. I would think that thye might be fairly easy to get for food items.

Game looks good so far. I might have to do a clean reinstall of Civ 4, because for whatever reason, I still cannot get the modd to run

I've opened an installation guide and issues thread here. If you continue to have problems installing the mod, please post your issues there.

Thanks for the help. it was only after a clean reinstall that things started working. Currently fiddling with House Atredies. I'll let yah know If I find any bugs

A bumper release for you...

Patch 1.3.8
(A full patch over 1.3 including all previous 1.3.x patches)

House Ecaz
House Ecaz has been added as a faction. They don't have any unique units yet - hopefully people's imagination will rise to the challenge. What they do have is an advantage in...

Unique Bonus Resources

Most Civs now have a bonus resource produced by a Unique National Wonder. The general idea is to make trade and diplomacy much more interesting. Here are the details:

Atreides: Landing Stage (Off World Trade) produces 3 units of Caladanian Wine, +1 happy, further +1 happy with Banqueting Hall

Tleilaxu: Landing Stage (Off World Trade) produces 3 units of Slig, +1 happy, further +1 happy with Banqueting Hall

Bene Gesserit: Chapterhouse (Zensunni Teachings) produces 3 units Missionaria Protectiva, +1 happy
Note: I wanted to provide the BG an early advantage to represent the preparing of the way by the Missionaria Protectiva. This gives them an early advantage in trade and diplomacy.

Fremen Civs: Stillsuit Workshop (Stillsuits) produces 3 units of Fremen Stillsuits, +1 health

Corrino: Sardaukar Outpost (Off World Trade) produces 3 units of Sardaukar Cooperation, allows construction of Sardaukar.
Note: This allow factions who can secure a deal with House Corrino to build Sardaukar troops.

Fenring: Fenring Landing Stage (Off World Trade) produces 3 units of Kindjal, allows construction of Ginaz Swordmaster.
Note: I'm not sure the association between Fenring and Ginaz is Dune canon, but it definitely helps make them unique.

Ix: Ix Landing Stage (Off World Trade) produces 3 units of Thinking Machines, allows construction of Cymek, Ixian Spider and Sentient War Machine.

Ordos: Ordos Landing Stage (Off World Trade) produces 3 units of Opafire, +1 happy

Ecaz: Semuta Suppliers (Off World Trade) produces 4 units of Semuta, +2 happy
Sapho Suppliers (Off World Trade) produces 4 units of Sapho Juice, allows construction of Mentat unit

Harkonnen don't get any because Giedi Prime is an industrial wasteland and they are reliant on others for imported goods. Of course they can always just take what they want by force...

We'll hopefully figure out a way for the Spacing Guild to make gold out of shipping units and resources in the future.

The units mentioned above are no longer Unique Units, but units that may be built by anyone who can secure a supply of the relevant resource.

Art

+ New city screen by Koma with some art from me

+ New unit graphics for Fremen Fedaykin and Naib's Chosen

+ Water texture removed - no more grey sparkly desert

Other features

+ Renamed a lot of units for flavour, used several of the suggested names posted around the forum.

+ Includes Arrakis.py mapscript by Cephalo. This features the new Polar terrain forming a polar cap. There is also a new Polar Ice resource. The next step is to have an improvement and World/National Wonders associated with the Polar Ice bonus, but this is not yet implemented.

+ Removed the strategic resources Borax, Sulphur and Jasmium Quartz.

+ Uranium replaces Iridium, to complete a list of six strategic resources. The graphic colour has been changed to orange to avoid confusion with Crystal.

+ Cotton bonus replaced with Dates

+ Reviewed bonus placement - see attached table which shows the proportions of each of the land based bonus resources. This spreadsheet will make it easier to gauge the impact of increasing/decreasing the amount of each resource. The sea based resources Sandtrout and Little Maker are much more prevalent than before.

+ Strategic resource unit dependencies reviewed and updated for all units.

+ Water Cache and a new Food Processing building provide increased health from some bonuses

+ Fremen Civs renamed to Chouhada Fremen (formerly Fremen) and Sihaya Fremen (formerly Sietch Tabr Fremen).

+ All Fremen Unique Units are now shared between both Fremen civs

+ Fremen civs now have a new Deathstills UB replacing Water Cache which retains 60% water on growth, rather than 50%.

+ Arid and Desert Plains terrains renamed to Rock and Mesa respectively

+ Desert terrain is now called Dunes and is meant to be used for the outer areas of Arrakis.py. The terrain has no yield and no cities can be founded on it. We should probably change the Archipelago mapscript not to place this terrain.

+ Removed all non-spice corporations

+ Cleared out all events from the XML

+ Includes davidallen's renamed XML tags and keldath's latest DDL.

+ Changed MIN_FOUND_VALUE from 350 to 400 to try and get the AI to space out its cities more.

Er... think that's it, but I'm sure to have forgotten something.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> DOWNLOAD HERE <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

There seems to be an issue with Arrakis.py where half the civs are instantly killed at the beginning of the game. Not sure why...

wow deliverator!
massive work!

im very happy with house ecaz

i also like the idea of the shared fremen uus, very interesting indeed.

i book patch 1.3.9,
i will add the missing units,
and spice up the unit part of the mod.

superb work.


edit:
here's a thought on the spacing guild:

how about - allowing the spacing guild corp to be the only corp that can spread to other cities/factions?
somehow this can contribute more money in some mechanism of the corp?


bout the units,
its very interesting about the shared units ,
but, wont you want that there will be an even number of uu to each faction?
its just a question, im more inclined to your new system - its really cool.

Bad news, I've just run a couple of autoplays and they both CTDed at around 150 turns. Could it be something to do with the new DDL?

Edit: Switched the link in the post above to patch 1.3.8b, as I had not included the correct new DDL. I am re-running an autoplay to see if there is still a problem.

Edit Edit: No I'm still getting a CTD, hopefully one of you guys can sort it out as I'm off to bed...

Deliverator said:

There seems to be an issue with Arrakis.py where half the civs are instantly killed at the beginning of the game. Not sure why...

Click to expand...

It happens to the player sometimes too.

hey,

mm ctds...who invented those anyway?

the new sdk is fine, ive tested it a bit on my second mod,
also - the changes are minor.

i would put my money on some art.

i saw some units overlapping each other that needs to be fixed.

tomorrow i will try to isolate the ctd,

dont worry , we will find it.

Yeah, that happened to me too. It doesn't happen on Archipelago so it seems specific to the Arrakis mapscript.

I cleaned out my mod directory, reinstalled 1.3 and then overlaid 1.3.8b. I have done two autoplays (tiny/noble) for 255 turns on archipelago with no CTD. I also did two autoplays for 255 turns on the arrakis mapscript; no CTD and no "crib death" of civs. Is it possible that the crash only occurs when certain civs are in the game? I ran civcheck and all it found was some leftover buildingclassinfo entries for the old corporation buildings; unlikely to be a problem.

EDIT: two huge 250 turn autoplays on archipelago, no CTD. Is anybody else getting a CTD or is it a "rumor"?

Deliverator said:

There seems to be an issue with Arrakis.py where half the civs are instantly killed at the beginning of the game. Not sure why...

Click to expand...

I don't think it is half the civs, but it is a definite problem in the mapscript. See this post for details and some further discussion. (I am not sure cephalo reads all the posts in the sub-forum but I bet he reads the mapscript thread.)

davidlallen said:

EDIT: two huge 250 turn autoplays on archipelago, no CTD. Is anybody else getting a CTD or is it a "rumor"?

Click to expand...

Maybe I mashed up my mod directory somehow by accident. I'll do a clean install and see if I still get the issue.

Cephalo is away for a week, so we'll probably have to keep using Archipelago for now. Arrakis with larger mapsizes may suffer less from this issue. It would good to amend Archipelago so that none of the Dunes (formerly Desert) terrain is placed, and so that some Polar Terrain is placed at the poles. I can maybe have a look at this.

Good news. The reported CTD seems to have been user error on my part. 1.3.8b seems to be stable after all.

Other good news is that the MIN_FOUND_VALUE tweak definitely seems to be causing the AI to spread its cities out more from what I've seen.

Can we try a new issue raising convention where we include the patch number?

1.3.8-1: There is an improvement called Qanat and a building called Qanat. Suggest we rename the building. 'Qanat Hub' is the best that springs to mind.

1.3.8-2: Health is still too much of an issue from initial plays. To control growth I'd rather reduce the amount of water available than have it restricted by health. Maybe we should have early building that gives +2 health, and/or we can make Water Cache give +1 health with Groundwater without giving Groundwater itself a health bonus.

keldath said:

bout the units,
its very interesting about the shared units ,
but, wont you want that there will be an even number of uu to each faction?
its just a question, im more inclined to your new system - its really cool.

Click to expand...

I think units that are semi-unique in that other factions can build them in some circumstances is much more interesting. We can still have a number of true unique units per faction.

In terms of balancing factions, I always liked Kael's concept of balancing at the civ level rather than in each individual game component. If one civ is strong in terms of economy or powerful hero units say, then it should be weaker in terms of rank and file military units to compensate. If we balance our civs overall by giving them advantages and disadvantages in different areas of the game, then that will add more strategic depth and flavour. That's one thing people say they like about the Dune board game - the strengths and weaknesses of each faction are really well captured in the gameplay.

To control growth I'd rather reduce the amount of water available than have it restricted by health.

Click to expand...

Why? The current method works much better IMO; it limits early growth without lowering the maximum population supportable in a city given its terrain (because you can eventually get rid of unhealth) and without slowing the growth of cities founded late game (once you have multiple health resources), and it provides good incentives to acquire health resources through colonization, trade, or offworld trade building.

The current method is ideal from a gameplay perspective.

If you start making health more available and water less available, you reduce the max city size in any given terrain, and you reduce the growth speed of late-founded cities, and you reduce the value of health resources.

You may be right. I just don't like all my cities having the sickly fumes all the time. Perhaps we can change the graphics if unhealth is going to be a common state for cities.

hehe deliverator!

i didnt notice it was you - your new awesome avatar confused me


ok, glad to know the ctd isnt in the patch.


city distance - we can also increase city instance between one another via globaldefines,
is also can help.

i agree,
we can make each faction different from the other with varius things, i like the way your heading.

hey deliverator,

have you changed any unit tech position?
also - unit classes?

i need to know cause there seem to be some weird stuff there.

edit:
wow guys..not sure why, but there is a big mess in the units.