Dune Wars Wonders

Some good model for some wonder
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=185956

I think this is a pretty good list. I rarely go for cultural wins, and that is one key aspect of wonders. Is there any good way to tell from the list, whether a cultural win would be too hard? For example, how do the total culture bonuses from the wonders in the first 5 tiers compare to vanilla? How about the overall total if you built all the wonders?

@ AnotherPacifist, from the HOTK threads I know you have a lot of experience with cultural victory; does the list make you interested to try a cultural victory in DW, or does it seem too hard or too easy?

I like the idea of the weather control satellite, and it is easy to add. That is much better than the Great Wall graphic, which has bothered me.

Could you add a column for building art? Some of the existing DW wonders have worthwhile art. Some of the vanilla buildings we haven't used yet may be worthwhile also. We need to have "some" art, even if it is poor, for each one before the data can be entered.

We have agreed to replace the marble contract with offworld labor. What about stone? Shall we just remove all the double-speed effects of resources from the sheet? Will that make a cultural victory too hard?

We need to think about what a cultural victory would really entail, in a Dunewars context. IMO, culture here is mostly political influence. Do we have an idea that with enough political influence, someone could take power? How would this be different from a Diplomatic victory?
Maybe diplomatic victory is uniting the Landsraad, whereas a cultural victory is gaining enough political power to make your house Emperor?

I think cultural victory, if included, should be tilted towards factions like the Bene Gesserit.

But the primary gain of more culture, which isn't present in vanilla, is more spice terrain coverage.

IMO culture from most buildings and wonders should be low enough that Noble specialists and the Imperial religion buildings are worth pursuing. If this makes a cultural victory infeasible, so be it.

Could you add a column for building art? Some of the existing DW wonders have worthwhile art. Some of the vanilla buildings we haven't used yet may be worthwhile also. We need to have "some" art, even if it is poor, for each one before the data can be entered.

Click to expand...

I can do some work lining up the art this weekend.

Attempting to maintain progress on this, I have assembled some passable art for the new Wonder list. It is a combination of the current Wonder Art with some other buildings attached that I have found in other mods.

The Stone of Prophecy - in attachment
Troubadour Company - in attachment
Suk Academy - in attachment
The Doctrine of Istislah - in attachment
Landsraad High Council - current High Tribunal
Orbital Comms Network - current Spice Foundry
Cogitor Philosopher - current Great Memorial
Sanctuary of Bakka - in attachment
Propaganda Corps - in attachment
Filmbook Archives - in attachment
University of Arrakis - in attachment
Sandworker's Union - current Fai Revenue Service
Imperial War Institute - same as now
Wet Planet Conservatory - current Bakka
Fai Water Tribute - in attachment
Dungeon of the Mudir Nahya - current Chouhada Academy
Tuek's Sietch - in attachment
Spice Orgy - current Legend of Usul
The Assassin's Handbook - in attachment
Order of Mentats - in attachment
Amtal Rule - current Aql Monument
Azhar Book - in attachment
Weather Control Satellite - use Communication Satellite for now - needs to be customized - change colour etc
House Shield Generator - use Force Shield - we can change shield colour to distinguish
Project Amal - current Intergalactic Comms Network
Guild Exchange - in attachment
Military Headquaters - in attachment
Political Center - in attachment
Banqueting Hall - current Obelisks of Muad'Dib
Chamber of Visions - in attachment
Guild Research Facility - in attachment
Cave of Birds - in attachment

Some of these can probably become permanent fixtures with a reskin. Others will need a better replacement in the future.

Cool! I forget; did we manage to fix the weird height issue that some graphics were having?

Which weird height issue do you mean?

This was a long time ago; maybe this was long-fixed. But where for example building some wonders was causing a huge giant mega-forceshield graphic to appear.

Yes, there was one wonder (the former Oracle of Hajj) which was intended to be built way outside the city limits. This is replaced as of 1.5.4 or thereabouts.

I am not going to have a chance to work on wonders for a while yet. I want to work on some sdk stuff such as the spy missions and the AI colony site selection. However, wonders are purely xml, and only three xml files are involved.

Would anybody be interested in taking on the project of modifying buildinginfo, buildingclassinfo, and artdefines_building to put in these wonders? I think this is one of the top three remaining problems in the mod. (The other two are AI colony site selection and getting a rough balance in power between the civs.)

The requested feature for yield/commerce from a bonus is working well enough to use, see this post. You can apply that patch over 1.6.5 and then add the buildings.

On the topic of buildings ...

A small redesign of the technocracy/ixian buildings is at this post with some comments a few posts down.

While looking for wonders that give cheap upgrades, I came across the tsentom1 python wonders thread. I hadn't seen these buildings before. The effects may be interesting to look through. I can probably adapt the python from any of them.

But, a few of the buildings are nice. I borrowed five into the attached zip.

* Bath of Mohenjo-Daro - middle eastern bath - a late game water wonder?
* Trade Fair of Troyes - big tent, water seller maybe?
* Trafalgar Square - a big monument, I am sure we can use it
* Terracotta Army - Chinese, but it looks dunish; many soldier statues
* Ishtar Gate - a triumph arch, I am sure we can use it.

Each directory contains an artdefines xml fragment with the scale and pathnames.

To be clear: are you talking about effects, or just art?

The E-bank effect seems interesting; some kind of Guild tie-in?

The trade fair seems pretty weak, and its hard to interpret the effect.

The King Richard's Crusade provides an interesting effect idea for the Mahdi religion. Maybe the shrine, or temples (or we could create a cathedral for it?) should auto-create Zealots?

Trafalgar square effect doesn't make a ton of sense for Dune - or did you just mean the art?

The Terracotta army effect suggests an interesting possibility for deathstills. Maybe deathstills could give water in the city for any units killed in the city (or killed assaulting the city)?
And we could move the +1 water effect to say Sietch, as a Guard Station UB.

Ishtar gate art looks cool, but the effect doesn't make much sense for Dune.

Ahriman said:

To be clear: are you talking about effects, or just art?

Click to expand...

My primary interest was the art, which can be integrated with a few lines of xml and will help us towards getting rid of all the non-dunish wonder art. If any of the effects seem *critical* to Dune, I can merge the python, but that is nonzero effort and I think I am the only active python programmer on the mod.

davidlallen said:

Would anybody be interested in taking on the project of modifying buildinginfo, buildingclassinfo, and artdefines_building to put in these wonders?

Click to expand...

I'll take it. I'm off work next week so this will be a good little project. I'll aim to have it done by next weekend. The Weather Control Satellite will also need your code skills, but I can enter it without effect initially.

One thing that also needs figuring out are the costs for the wonders - any thoughts how we can determine decent values?

I came across the tsentom1 python wonders thread. I hadn't seen these buildings before. The effects may be interesting to look through. I can probably adapt the python from any of them.

Click to expand...

Some of the art can probably find a home, and it is worth skimming over all the effects to see if that stimulates any new ideas. I think we can probably still support another 5-10 wonders in addition to those outlined so far.

If any of the effects seem *critical* to Dune, I can merge the python, but that is nonzero effort and I think I am the only active python programmer on the mod.

Click to expand...

Understood. None are critical, they're just in the "wouldn't it be neat if" category. Low priority. I agree that the art looked neat.

But for the long term, I agree that:

I think we can probably still support another 5-10 wonders in addition to those outlined so far.

Click to expand...

Deliverator said:

I'll take it. I'm off work next week so this will be a good little project. I'll aim to have it done by next weekend ... One thing that also needs figuring out are the costs for the wonders - any thoughts how we can determine decent values?

Click to expand...

Excellent! For costs, as a starting point, just find a vanilla wonder of the same tech tier (x position in the tech tree) and use that. We can tune later, but that will give the right order of magnitude.

Babel tower model just released: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=13722

Wonders Patch

Here is an initial patch, incremental over 1.6.5, with the work I have done on the new wonders.

Notes:

* I won't describe all the new wonder effects - the pedia is your friend.

* The pedia links need sorting out as many of them currently point to random vanilla entries. I would like to come up with flavour text descriptions for the pedia when I get a chance.

* Icons are not yet done, so there are lots of plague skull icons instead. If someone fancies helping out with the icons... Otherwise I can look at it at the weekend.

* Costs roughly based on Era - probably they will need tweaking based to factor in their effects. An alternate and more interesting way to make wonders more expensive or harder to get is to add building requirements for them.

* The Weather Control Satellite has the placeholder effect of +1 commerce on desert tiles (similar to vanilla Colossus) as the proposed effect needs custom code.

* Three techs were left completely empty by the changes: Frigate Transportation, Distrans, Holtzmann Generators. We have previously agreed that the late tech tree needs redesign anyway so Distrans and Holtzmann Generators could feed into that redesign. I put the Guild Research Facility on the Frigate Transportation tech just so it wasn't empty - perhaps we could rename the tech to Guild Embassies or Guild Relations.

* Changed the Water Shipper to Polar Water Shipper, now gives +0.5 water per Polar Ice connected.

* I need to put a dome or something over the Wet Planet Conservatory graphic

* The House Shield Generator might not work too well as it is. I have entered it as obsolete with Ablative Shields, but the defensive bonus is not obsoleted according the pedia. Also, the graphics clash when you have both Force Shield and House Shield Generator in the same city - weird Russian doll type situation. Really the blue Force Shield should replace the old red House Shield Generator.

* I added the House Atomics project (or ritual?) back. It is exactly the same as the Manhattan Project in vanilla. I haven't tested whether Nukes are now buildable. I was thinking perhaps it would be better to have a National Wonder for Nukes - there is a bAllowsNukes in building infos so I guess this is possible.

* Renamed the Industrialism tech to Mechanization

Download Link

We can refine the new wonders with feedback. We still need another 10 or so wonders I reckon, some National and some World. Perhaps we can review the empty looking techs and see if any ideas emerge that way, or bear it mind for the late tech tree redesign (which is worth a new thread).

Looks great! I put it on top of my local 1.6.5 installation and everything comes up in the pedia. Civcheck found one error; in buildingclassinfos for Tuek's Sietch, the default building is BUILDING_ARTEMIS when it should be BUILDING_TUEKS_SIETCH.

---

We definitely need a strategy for making DuneWarsText.xml friendlier to multiple developers. Having to cut/paste for all six languages is a pain. So I maintain DuneWarsText.txt and then there is a script DuneWarsText.tcl which performs the cutting and pasting for the languages automatically. Unfortunately this script is in a different programming language "tcl" and you do not have that programming environment installed. Since you have directly added stuff to DuneWarsText.xml, the next time I run the script I will overwrite your new entries.

The first problem is, the pedia and strategy references in the buildinginfos.xml file point to vanilla wonders. That one, you can fix although it it tedious. The second problem is, adding the entries into DuneWarsText.something.

Let me try to convert DuneWarsText.tcl into an executable which you can run. Then you can update DuneWarsText.txt also, instead of trying to maintain the xml file directly.

---

In other news, I have done 90% of what I wanted to do for the 1.7 version. As I have mentioned I would like people to perform an install test of that. There is no perfect solution, but I propose to upload a 1.7 beta 1 which does *not* have your new buildings. People would need to test each release separately. Then you can incorporate any wonder feedback into another 1.6.5.x patch, while I incorporate any 1.7 feedback into 1.7 beta 2. Finally, this weekend, I will integrate your buildings into 1.7 and release the whole thing. What do you think?

Good job Deliverator.

I suggest we merge Frigate transportation into the Spaceports tech. That is what I thought we were renaming when I suggested Frigate Transportation; what was the old name of Frigate Transportation?

I will try to get a more concrete proposal for late-game techs, wonders, units, etc. out at some stage, I haven't really had a chance.