late game tech tree

OK, perhaps the first tech should be Holtzmann Effect rather than generators.
This sounds good to me. This would leave Holtzmann Generators open as a late-game tech, if needed.

Fruit and vegetables make you big and strong.
I got the impression that this was an ornamental garden, rather than a vegetable garden big enough to feed a city.

Can I suggest the Qanat as one health building, or maybe a sewer system? *Clean* water and sanitation is surely a health rather than just water issue. Or maybe a sewage recycling system?
And then an Infirmary as a second one? Maybe at Benevolence tech, which is otherwise a bit bare?

Clearly, none of the original devs foresaw the case that hills are lower than plains.

We're just too awesome for them :)
 
I am tempted to make these guys into the Barbarian faction. I think that makes more sense than smugglers.
We have IMO three options for Barbarians; they can represent Houses Minor, Smugglers, or Renegade Natives (Jacuruta works well for that).

Currently, barbarians perform a very minor role, they almost never appear beyond the early game.
I suspect this is because they only really spawn on land tiles, and only outside line of sight of players. And even then all they do is act as free cities, particularly for Fremen players racing around with Crysknife fighters.

Is there a way we could make barbarians a bit more interesting and more important, and a bit more of a threat?

There is some information in this thread around adding additional barbarian civilizations. The J's work culminated in his Spawn A Civ modcomp which does have some limitations. Perhaps with some additional coding we could have non-playable Cast-Out and Smuggler civs to add more interest and challenge to the mod.
 
I think that we're unlikely to be able to get effective barbarian *civs*, that have cities and build units. There just isnt' enough good-land, the good city sites all get taken.

I think we're more likely to be able to get interesting barbarians if they are random spawns (or we could use Events, like the "uprisings" design for Warhammer, that place barbarian units directly near cities).

I suspect that the main reason that barbs are so weak in this mod, is that they can only appear on land tiles that are not in line of sight (including within cultural borders) of any player (including AIs). There just aren't that many tiles like that in Dune; most tiles are water, and then most of the land tiles get taken up. And those that don't aren't on contiguous landmasses with civs, so couldn't walk there anyway.
 
True, the generic native barbarians are unlikely to ever represent a serious threat. How about having a late-game incursion of barbarian units, perhaps representing the Return of the Honored Matres which was a pretty serious threat to all factions on Dune. This could be a precursor to incursions from the Thinking Machines Empire and the Omnius Scourge, which the Matres themselves are fleeing.

Through some straightforward python or Events XML, the spawned barb units can principally target the player or players who are furthest ahead at the time, providing an interesting shakeup to the balance of power. In the Warhammer mod (currently undergoing painful revision :p), targeted barbarian spawning events worked great as way of keeping skilled players on their toes and preventing the inevitable late-game boredom when you begin pulling too far ahead.
 
I haven't read enough, but am I missing something? I thought the Honored Matres developed during the Scattering, while Omnius and the Thinking Machines were defeated before the establishment of the Corrinos as emperors. Maybe we can represent the rebirth of the latter after that particular tech is researched. Right now Thinking Machines is just a tech without any benefits, but maybe if you give a large production bonus to that tech (e.g. +10% production in all cities) and couple that with a big threat (e.g. barb tarantulas preloaded on barb transports appearing in open desert) that would be fun.
 
Yeah, in Heretics of Dunee the Honored Matres return from the Scattering and invade the Old Empire, fleeing an fearsome "unknown enemy"; it is later revealed that though the last of the Thinking Machines were thought destroyed in the Butlerian Jihad, probes from the Machines escaped to the periphery and have secretly been rebuilding the vast Synchronized Empire, which has torn apart the Honored Matres' worlds and now turns inward toward Dune. (Although, the identity of the Enemy was left as a cliffhanger due to Frank Herbert's death, and was revealed by his son in Hunters of Dune allegedly based on FH's notes.) [end nerdy Dune fan outburst.. now!]

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honored_Matres)

The Honored Matres develop during this Scattering; in Heretics of Dune, they return to the Old Empire, wreaking havoc and leaving destruction in their wake. Tleilaxu Master Waff notes that they are "Far more terrible than Reverend Mothers of the Bene Gesserit." It is ultimately indicated in Chapterhouse Dune that they are fleeing a powerful, "unknown enemy" who had conquered their own massive empire out in the Scattering.

The Enemy
Murbella also discovers the true nature of the unknown Enemy: they are the resurrected thinking machines, thought destroyed millennia before but amassing a force to finally exterminate humanity. Through Other Memory she witnesses the Honored Matres' first encounter with the unknown Enemy. A young Matre commander had invaded an area controlled by the remnants of the machine empire, with initial success. However, the thinking machines' retribution had been terrible, especially when they had realized that humans still existed. The machines had destroyed the Honored Matre empire, and the remnants had then fled back to the Old Empire to build a new dominion.

So, could be cool to have a wave of vicious Honored Matres start to filter in during the late midgame to shake things up a bit and knock back the leading factions; possibly followed by a wave from the Synchronized Empire in the late game. (These could be made game options that can be set on or off). If it's easier the HM's could simply be a nonplayable civ with very aggressive AI values and diplo penalties. One possible twist is to allow a expensive late-game Bene Gesserit wonder which allows peace or alliance with the HMs, to represent their joining as the New Sisterhood.
 
I'm not sure what to do with the information, exactly, but here is a spreadsheet which may help in redesigning the late game tech tree. It shows some interesting statistics about each tech in the tech tree. For each tech, it lists:

* Name and era
* Current X position on the tech chooser screen
* Min possible X position, assuming we avoid any backwards arrows. So if a tech has prerequisites at X=2, X=2, X=4 then its own minimum X is 5. Formally, find all of the prerequisite techs, take the max of their X values, and add one.
* Max possible X position, assuming we do not extend the tree past the end. Future tech is at X=18. Suppose there is some tech at X=12, however, the only thing that tech is a prerequisite for is Future Tech. Then we could slide that tech anywhere along the X axis as far as X=17 without introducing any backwards arrows. Formally, find all the techs of which this is a prereq, take the min of their X values, and subtract one.
* NumSets: not interesting to you. This is the number of actually different ways you can reach this tech. For example Divine Mandate has two different ways, because one of its prereqs is Feudalism, and either Fanaticism or Education leads to Feudalism. I will wait here while you list out the 18 different paths you can use to get Weirding Way.
* MinTechs: the minimum number of other techs you must have, in order to reach this tech.
* Cost: the base cost of this tech by itself
* CumCost: the total beaker cost of researching this tech, including all its prereqs.

This immediately exposed some bugs which were caused by moving techs around incautiously (probably by me). Each era should contain techs with similar X positions: ancient is X=1 through X=3, classical is X=4 through X=6, etc. The homeworld screen allows you to purchase any unit of the same era you are in. But, about 8 techs had the wrong era. For example, Planetary Ecology (X=6) was set to modern era (X should be >= 15). This would allow you to research Planetary Ecology at relatively low cost, and get access to advanced units through the homeworld screen. I have cleaned this up for 1.7.1.

I figure that the cumulative cost is what we should focus on, although I am not sure exactly what to do with it. You can see that the cumulative cost of techs at a particular level varies widely. 2:1 cost at the same level is not uncommon, and 3:1 happens occasionally. For example, Mind Training (4K cumulative cost, 10 prereq techs) and Solid Fuel (12K and 29) are at the same level.

The program I wrote to generate this table is available at this link. Unzip the executable into your assets/xml/technologies directory and execute it; it will write a file called tech-costs.csv into the same directory. If you do not have write access into your program files directories, copy the civ4techinfos.xml file from there into some directory where you do have write access. One warning, however, the program is not guaranteed to work for all tech trees, and I did not put much work into nice error messages. In particular I tried it on the vanilla BTS tech tree and it just runs forever until it uses up all your memory. Anyway, if you want to try some small changes to the DW tech tree and see the effect, it will probably work.
 

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I'm not sure what to do with the information, exactly, but here is a spreadsheet which may help in redesigning the late game tech tree.

This looks helpful, but it is a shame that your program doesn't work for the vanilla tech tree. It would obviously be useful to have for comparison. I think Ahriman is off travelling for a couple of weeks, but it might be useful to carry on identifying things we would like the late game and late game tech tree to have, plus any problems with the current tech tree.

So, could be cool to have a wave of vicious Honored Matres start to filter in during the late midgame to shake things up a bit and knock back the leading factions; possibly followed by a wave from the Synchronized Empire in the late game. (These could be made game options that can be set on or off). If it's easier the HM's could simply be a nonplayable civ with very aggressive AI values and diplo penalties. One possible twist is to allow a expensive late-game Bene Gesserit wonder which allows peace or alliance with the HMs, to represent their joining as the New Sisterhood.

I know we have had some debate around whether the mod should just cover the first three Frank Herbert books or spread wider. Personally, I think that extending the mod into the last three books might be a good way of finding more material for the later game. We still don't have a massive amount of ideas for the later tech tree.

With barbarian/minor civs, I guess there have been a few ideas now around the forum:

+ The Cast-Out / Iduali / Jacurutu / Waterstealers
+ Agents of the Spacing Guild (perhaps attacking when a certain amount of the planet is terraformed on realising spice production is threatened)
+ The Honored Matres
+ Thinking Machines/Synchronized Empire

One question is whether we want stronger barbarians in the early game to spice things up, barbarian incursions in the late game to keep things interesting or both. I quite like the idea of having some emergent civilizations for the organizations above.

A late game incursion by the Thinking Machines/Synchonized Empire could be interesting. Perhaps this could be tied in with the Technocracy religion - there could be a risk that some of your cities could fall under the control of the Thinking Machines and then the player can actually play out the second Butlerian jihad to eliminate them.
 
This looks helpful, but it is a shame that your program doesn't work for the vanilla tech tree.

I will make another attempt at this.

I quite like the idea of having some emergent civilizations for the organizations above.

I have thought about this a little, and I would love advice from other mods on how to balance this. I think Warhammer has this. Barbarian stacks will appear. How strong should they be, # units, unit type, promotions? On the one hand, choosing the strength by the number of turns into the game could result in either a nuisance or an unstoppable menace. On the other hand, choosing based on the strength of the affected player seems to discourage strong play: *don't* build up a strong army because then the barbarians will be strong.

A late game incursion by the Thinking Machines/Synchonized Empire could be interesting. Perhaps this could be tied in with the Technocracy religion

Please see Ahriman's violent disagreement with this particular concept in this thread. I still feel there is something useful here, but perhaps events which have no specific affinity for technocrat cities would be more acceptable.
 
Again, just dropping in briefly for now. I'll look at the tech chooser, and a design for high-end, once I'm back home.

My main issue with emergent civs is that there isn't really the land for them to function effectively. The good land is already taken, the rest is really junk.
Infernals can work as an emergent civ, because they have mechanics to support them; they can work with a super-city of specialists, and they get free units whenever other units die. Mercurians don't really work as an emergent civ IMO.

And apologies again for the post 3 in that thread... highly unnecessary tone.

I have been re-reading Dune Messiah and Children of Dune while travelling. I would like to get the cast-out in somehow, most likely as barbarian units.

What Warhammer does is just have a very large number of events that spawn barbarian units.
Like: an ork warband is spotted, which makes a warboss and an army of ork axemen and boarboyz.
The specific events have specific unit spawns hard-coded into the particular event, variety happens just because there are so many of the different events.
The events have a tech requirement, so that powerful events spawning big armies don't happen too early.
Which also means they can work as a mild anti-slippery slope mechanic, since they hit factions ahead in tech harder (with nastier uprisings).
 
I think that's a good idea, but if possible, please write up a design for what you plan to do so that we can take a look. I have found that when I just go off and do something, it is not as good as what we get after discussing it.
 
I think that's a good idea, but if possible, please write up a design for what you plan to do so that we can take a look. I have found that when I just go off and do something, it is not as good as what we get after discussing it.

Agreed. If you have specific ideas for tech names or the late tech tree in general it would be good to discuss them a bit.

I think a key thing is figuring out why the current late game techs are boring. I think that what keeps a strategy game interesting is different choices and trade-offs. The problem may be that by the later game, it is harder to provide a tech choice that makes a significant difference to the game.

More random thoughts for the late game:
1. One feature of the vanilla late game that we are not using is the parachute drop mechanism. Perhaps we could have a Drop Pods/Orbital Insertion promotion that enables it?
2. Since we made the Ixian units into Walker vehicles, we no longer have any cybernetic units despite having a Cybernetics tech. How about either (i) having some powerful late game Cybernetic promotions and/or (ii) bringing back the Cymek unit as a strong all round unit that you upgrade Guardsman/Melee units into.
3. We have discussed before having some more military units associated with each religion. e.g. Amazon Guard for Qizarate. As I've said it would be good to have some more significant religious/mystical techs in the late game. Perhaps a late tech that enables a tier of powerful religious units could help keep things interesting.
 
You really should move Reverend Mothers to Water of Life, since they have to experience a "spice agony" to be created.

Also I suggest:

Code:
Academies->Mind Training->Mentat Logic
Academies->Mind Training->Suk School
Academies->Mind Training->Weirding Way->Water of Life

Academies->Research Labs->Cybernetics
Academies->Research Labs->Genetic Manipulation->Mentat Logic

Although "Imperial Conditioning" might be better than "Suk School".
 
Reverend Mothers were moved from Water of Life to Academies for gameplay reasons as they needed to be available earlier. I agree Water of Life would be the natural tech for them.

I've suggested before that we restructure the Sand Worms branch of the tech tree to bring Water of Life earlier so that RMs can move back there.
 
Yeah well part of the problem is that you have no pre-Reverend Mother BG units.
 
Apart from the Sayyadina and the earliest two Kwisatz units, of course.

All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
 
would you mind if i take the liberty to extend a bit the tech tree and late stage of it?

I think that's a good idea, but if possible, please write up a design for what you plan to do so that we can take a look. I have found that when I just go off and do something, it is not as good as what we get after discussing it.

Agreed. It would be excellent to have a design up to discuss. I've been tinkering with some ideas but haven't had a chance to put a proper design together. I'd love to see what you come with.

Reverend Mothers were moved from Water of Life to Academies for gameplay reasons as they needed to be available earlier. I agree Water of Life would be the natural tech for them.
Perhaps if we had a "Sister" unit as an Infiltrator replacement, then we could move the RM back to Water of Life?
 
I had another idea for advanced tech tree changes.

Rather than creating even more units (and non-canon ones) that make our existing flavorful Sardaukar and Fedaykin and the like units obsolete, we could instead use a solution similar to one we use for Warhammer: have advanced techs enable superior promotions.

So for example, the Weirding Way tech can enable Weirding 1 and Weirding 2 promotions for melee units; they give +10% strength and +10% vs melee units. Or similar.

An advanced materials tech can give a promotion for aircraft that increases their range +1 and combat strength +10%, and a promotion for vehicles that increases their base strength +10% and strength vs guardsmen +10%.

An advanced energy source tech (or miniaturization?) could give vehicle units a promotion that increases their withdraw chance and their movement speed.

A weapons tech that gives guardsmen extra first strikes and intercept chance.

And so forth.

Thoughts?
 
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