Dune Wars

The idea to use Apostolic Palace option to add another diplo dimension to the game is really worth considering, especially that Duniverse has 2 collective bodies of power: Landsraad Council and CHOAM Board. The AP could go for CHOAM Board and could also be used to boost the pro-Spice civs. I am no coder so I will just let my imagination perhaps-not-so-feasibly loose, but, say, if you have a Spice Corporation and are not a Liet-like dreamer, you may join the CHOAM Board (after CHOAM Directorship project is built), which provides hammer bonus from each spice-oriented building (some should be added, like carryall bays, harvester pads, servicing facilities etc.) plus you get a hefty coin bonus for each spice sold offworld (That should be it - if you can import soostone and semuta, you should have a chance to export spice out for kingly cash-in if you have a CHOAM membership).

I agree that the whole game should be spice-oriented, spice being made a requirement for many things, and not just one unit, but as many units as you can get. People should be praying for spice blows and founding cities on marginal terrain just to get a bigger share of the desert. Spice is a most common elite consumer good, so perhaps better units could demand Spice, cultural buildings could generate bigger bonus if spice is provided etc.

Seeing as we are going with Imperium and Landsraad as religions that frees up CHOAM

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Not really. Landsraad is a trade religion because it controls CHOAM.

I'm not opposed to a spice trade monopoly victory, but its hard to see how it would be implemented. Trying to divvy up CHOAM directorships or something seems far too complicated.

The simplest way would probably be to control X spice resources, either through harvesting them yourself or through diplomacy trades. X could scale with map size, but maybe 80 spice resources on a normal size map wins you the game?

This would synergize nicely with the planned Project Amal wonder too.

The problem is that the variation in spice yields can make this pretty random.

AHR13
Qanat building feels slightly overpriced at 150 hammers, maybe reduce it to 120?

AHR14
Polar tiles should all have fresh water access intrinsically (for the cottage bonus hammers).

AHR15
Consider making windtraps *not* spread water, so water spreading comes only from wells and then the catchbasin/reservoir, and on polar terrain. As it is, cottagespam is usually the best strategy, nearly every tile has fresh water access (compare; cottage with fresh water = 1h1c and commerce grows over time, vs turbine 1h1c, no growth without rebuilding the improvement).

AHR16
The level 3 mines and wells and turbines build time is now too long, given how low their marginal gain is. Reduce it back to be the same as the level 2 version.

AHR17
Turbine and solar farm shouldn't be buildable on mesa, otherwise they are better than the mine.

AHR18
1.5.2
The missile launcher vehicle graphic is a bit too large, needs to be reduced.
The unit might also be slightly too cheap (balancewise).

AHR19
The spotter control building needs to not require the landing stage; the landing stage is capped at 2 per faction (and is bugged).

AHR20
The defense grid needs to not be made obsolete with lasgun weapons; it is a required buidling for the force shield. Reduce the defense grid bonus down to 25% though and make it cheaper, and boost the force shield up to 75%.

Lasgun troops ignore shields; the tech doesn't need to make the buildings obsolete.

AHR21
Early game expansion is a little fast, but late-game cities are a little small.
I suggest increasing the cost of settlers by ~30% or so, and increasing the greenhouse and water refinery yields from 10% to 15% (25% was clearly too much, but 10% is quite low).
Or the water seller could go from +2 water to +3 - or at least the water from the polar water extraction could give +1 health or +1 happy. It should be the most valuable resource in the game, but instead all it does is let you build one building.

AHR22
There needs to be some means of curing the Tleilaxu plague other than making peace with them. A 25% penalty that rapidly ends up infecting your entire army is just too much. I would say in each city you have, 1 unit gets cured per turn, and if that city has a hospital, all units get cured.

This way, it still cripples your offensive ability, but not your defensive ability.

AHR23
Suspensor transport needs to be unable to attack; after dropping its cargo (nice work on the AI cephalo!) the AI suicides its stack of transports against my city defenders.

Ahriman said:

AHR22
There needs to be some means of curing the Tleilaxu plague other than making peace with them. A 25% penalty that rapidly ends up infecting your entire army is just too much. I would say in each city you have, 1 unit gets cured per turn, and if that city has a hospital, all units get cured.

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FWIW, hospitals (and the Suk Academy) do cure all units in the city. I can easily drop the transmission percentage, say from 25% to 10%?

AHR22

I can easily drop the transmission percentage, say from 25% to 10%?

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You can try it. It also feels very strange for vehicles (especially ixian walkers!), siege units and aircraft to be plagued. And it feels strange that my hornet can become plagued from bombing an enemy unit or attacking their hornets.

And a chance to wear off automatically would be nice; I suspect it requires sdk changes, but FFH has promotions that can wear off with an x% chance per turn. It would be nice if the disease wasn't permanent; real diseases either kill you or wear off after a while.

It could also be nice if once diseased, units had a resistance to becoming reinfected at a later date.

[what can I say, my research these days is epidemiological]

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I also don't quite understand how the transmission works. What exactly is the 10% parameter? Because I find that newly produced units, even in a city that never had any combat, become immediately plagued. It only takes a few turns of war before almost every military unit I have is plagued, even those far from the frontlines.

I hadn't noticed the hospital thing because it is so late in the game; thats good though.

AHR24
Hornet intercept chance should be increased from 10% up to at least 40% (or even higher, 70% could work). Otherwise they can't effectively intercept bombers.

This is Dune Wars patch 1.5.3, it includes everything from 1.5.1 (link), and 1.5.2 (link) and can be installed over 1.5 (link) or 1.5.1 or 1.5.2.

Fixes/Changes

+ Qanat Building renamed to Mushtamal, uses Babylonian Garden graphic (to fix CTD - thanks Ahriman and Koma), cost reduced from 100 to 80 (AHR13)
+ The Great Mushtamal wonder renamed to Wet Planet Conservatory to avoid confusion
+ Aquabore raised to +5 water to help later game growth, build time reduced from 1200 to 1000 (Deep Well is 800)
(AHR16,AHR21)
+ Core Mine build time reduced to same as Deep Mine (AHR16)
+ Spotter Control no longer requires landing stage (AHR19)
+ Defense Grid renamed to Guard Station, defense bonus reduced to 25%, is not obsoleted by Lasgun Weaponry (AHR20)
+ Force Shield defense bonus increased to 75% (AHR20)
+ Missile Launcher cost increased from 50 to 105, graphic reduced in size
+ Greenhouse and Water Refinery now add 15% water (AHR21 - increasing Settler cost seems complicated - it's not done like other units...)
+ Polar Ice gives +1 health (AHR21)
+ Water Seller renamed to Water Shipper, now yields +3 water (AHR21)
+ The Ixians spice firm was more profitable than all other civs (3.3 commerce per spice, rather than 3) - this seemed weird so I changed it to be the same as the others.
+ Turbines may now only be built on flatlands (AHR17) (this is weird conceptually - the best place for a wind turbine would be Mesa surely - perhaps we should rethink the role of Mines and Turbines a bit)
+ Swordmaster renamed to Kindjal Soldier
+ Shock Trooper renamed to Shield Fighter, now upgrades to Kindjal Soldier
+ Kindjal resource renamed to Ginaz School Training
+ Removed Bomb Shelter building - merged effects into Force Shield (AH110)
+ Archipelago mapscript is now a copy of Dunipelago - just in case anyone uses it by accident.
+ Ixian secondary colour is no longer white on very light grey, so that you can actually read their city populations when playing against them.

Download Dune Wars 1.5.3

Please do post any issues, bugs or suggestions here. Also, check out the Dune Wars subforum for the latest developments.

AHR25
Plantation resources have very high yeilds at the start of the game, often +6 resources. Maybe we should reduce the yields of all plantations and have the yields added back with some techs (like sand farms and arrakis transformation).

Eg: reduce the plantation yields by 1c, give plantations +1c with sand farms.

AHR26
Heavy trooper still isn't upgrading to Lasgun soldier; it should.

AHR27
Since Fremen water debt gives "replacements" for both shield fighter and knidjal soldier (worm rider and fedaykin), and Sardaukar cooperation gives replacements for both shield fighter and kindjal solider (sardaukar legionary and noukker), maybe ginaz school training should also give two units; the current version, and one at Kindjal blades that is:
Ginaz swordmaster. Strength 18, 1 move, ignores city defense, +25% city attack, +25% defense vs melee.
And then we could tone the kindjal soldier down to 25% city attack.

AHR28
It looks like Spotter control has the same problem that landing stage used to have; it isn't buildable in landlocked cities.

AHR29
Maybe every military civic should come with all units have +1 gold unit upkeep. The high commerce yields in this mod mean that unit upkeep costs are trivial, so it is too easy to maintain really massive armies without cutting into your economy.

Ahriman said:

You can try it. It also feels very strange for vehicles (especially ixian walkers!), siege units and aircraft to be plagued. And it feels strange that my hornet can become plagued from bombing an enemy unit or attacking their hornets.

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Good suggestion, certain units should be immune to plague, period. Thinking machine units and hornets, definitely; one isn't biological and the other never gets close to you. Any other units which should be simply immune?

Siege attacks probably should not cause you to catch plague, but if you are attacked or stacked with an infected unit, you could catch it. I'm not sure if I can tell what type of attack was made, only that an attack happened; but I will investigate that.

And a chance to wear off automatically would be nice

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I can try that, but it gets a little difficult if N units are stacked together. The infection may wear off one unit, but there are N-1 infected units to re-infect it, so the chances are pretty good. Perhaps another promotion, "recently plagued", which could prevent retransmission for a few turns?

It is only worth making the mechanic more complicated, if it seems to have the potential of being fun. You commented before that automatic spreading is not fun because the player is not making any tactical choices. Should we pursue this?

I find that newly produced units, even in a city that never had any combat, become immediately plagued.

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It is always possible there is a bug. However, when an infected unit enters a city, that city itself becomes infected. You can see this in the city screen, there is an extra -2 building unhealthiness, provided by the "Tleilaxu Plague" building. This building has no graphics but it shows up in the list of buildings on the left of the city screen. Is this building involved in the effect you are seeing?

Ahriman said:

The high commerce yields in this mod mean that unit upkeep costs are trivial, so it is too easy to maintain really massive armies without cutting into your economy.

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There have been huge economic changes as part of 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 with the new terrain types. I have not calibrated with autoplays yet. The goal was to have commerce be in the range of 200-300 for all civs by turn 250, which more or less matches with vanilla archipelago. I turned down foreign commerce a lot in 1.5.1 to help this. Do you find your own civ, and the AI civs, in this range or way high? Which components of the commerce seem especially large?

AHR22

Any other units which should be simply immune?

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Well, Reverend mothers, just for fluff purposes.

It is only worth making the mechanic more complicated, if it seems to have the potential of being fun.

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I agree. However, a recovery rate could still be useful and not add much player complexity, because it is mostly happening in the background; the observed effect (should) be that the plague dies out if you stop fighting, even if the war has not ended.

The infection may wear off one unit, but there are N-1 infected units to re-infect it, so the chances are pretty good.

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Am I correct in understanding this, that every unplagued unit in the stack has a (currently) 25% chance of being infected, per infected unit in the stack?
So if there is a 10 unit stack with 3 infected units, then each uninfected unit has (1 - 0.75^3 = 0.58) 58% chance of becoming infected on the first turn? And then if 3 units are infected, then the remaining 4 units have a (1-0.75^6=0.82) 82% chance of being infected the next turn?
That seems way too fast.

Also, a recovery chance seems both logical (a tailored disease will still only infect so many people, and the unit will then recover) and fun, and the complexity is ok because the player doesn't have to keep track of it; they just observe the proportion of their units who are infected.
The purpose is; currently if you get into a war with BTls and have a few skirmishes and get infected, and then have a long "coldwar" with them where you aren't really fighting but are still at war, the infection still spreads like crazy and weakens your army.

Adding recovery means that you have to keep getting combat with the BTls in order for your army to still mostly stay plagued.

A "recovered" promotion that prevents reinfection for a few turns would also help.

Another possibility; have a unit take some damage when it receives the plague; some of the soldiers are killed outright).

I can think of lots of ways of doing things, I could write up an SIR model (Susceptible, Infected, Recovered) because this is kindof what I do right now, so I am at greater than average risk of making a design that is too complicated.

You commented before that automatic spreading is not fun because the player is not making any tactical choices. Should we pursue this?

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I suspect that automatic spread has to occur in order for the AI to effectively use the ability.

But the ability would be much more transparent to the player if only the stacks where combat was occurring could be infected; the plague currently seems to spread all over your empire somehow.

However, when an infected unit enters a city, that city itself becomes infected.

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Ok, this is probably what is happening, but the effect is not at all obvious.

Perhaps we should split the mechanic in two:
a) a disease mechanic that passes the plague to any non-immune unit that comes into combat with a BTl unit, and then passes it to other units in the stack, but does NOT pass it to cities
b) an espionage mission for Tleliaxu that acts as poison city water, but also decreases population size by 1 and adds the plague building to the city, that functions as the current plague city building (+2 unhealth and spreads the plague).

AHR30
The too much slavery/serfdom whipping and/or drafting is still very prevalent; see attached save. Almost all the AIs (particularly the slavery-loving harkonnens) have tiny cities because they've been whipping their population to death all game.

We might want to (temporarily) remove the drafting and whipping possibilities from the imperial fealty, slavery and serfdom civics until we can find a fix.

Also: consider tweaking harkonnen slavery so that it only gives free slaves with 75% probability from combat, and thne have the slavery civic (when adopted by anyone) give a +25% chance of capturing a slave from combat.

AHR29

There have been huge economic changes as part of 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 with the new terrain types. I have not calibrated with autoplays yet. The goal was to have commerce be in the range of 200-300 for all civs by turn 250, which more or less matches with vanilla archipelago. I turned down foreign commerce a lot in 1.5.1 to help this. Do you find your own civ, and the AI civs, in this range or way high? Which components of the commerce seem especially large?

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Here is my turn 240 commerce screen (Emperor difficulty); I am able to cottagespam like crazy and generate huge tile-yield bonuses. Private property + planned economy, my cottaged rock tiles are 3h5c
Removing the fresh-water from windtraps will make cottages less desirable, which will help this. So will preventing cottages from being built on mesas.

Trade and spice income seems ok.

But I have 100+ units and am only paying 35 in unit upkeep costs (plus another ~15 in unit costs as part inflation).

Maybe we need to reduce the free units paid for automatically by population size?

Ahriman said:

Here is my turn 240 commerce screen (Emperor difficulty)

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I play at Noble, and I am not sure how expected commerce scales. Now I need a render farm which can autoplay at least a few different difficulties :-(.

650 seems way too large. Clearly some more economic tuning is in order, since the tuning I just did for 1.5.1 was made irrelevant by the new terrain in 1.5.2.

I play at Noble, and I am not sure how expected commerce scales

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Emperor vs noble just buffs the AI; the only penalties for the human player are a handicap to unit upkeep (-9 units per turn), and lower happiness and health.

At Emperor difficulty, commerce probably won't be affected much, but the AI gets hammer and beaker bonuses (and starts with a free worker unit IIRC), so their science and gold income for the same commerce yield will be higher, and they will have built more stuff.

650 seems way too large. Clearly some more economic tuning is in order, since the tuning I just did for 1.5.1 was made irrelevant by the new terrain in 1.5.2.

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But said tuning needs to be in a way that doesn't hurt the AI. I doubt the AI commerce in this game was nearly as high as mine (though they still trade techs like crazy, even with no-tech-brokering game option, and so are ahead of me in tech thanks to this and their inherent bonuses).
None of your tuning was based on human play, who can optimize much better than the AI. My cities are all much more productive than theirs because of superior placement and terraforming.

Like I said, the main issue here was the power of cottage spam; basically every tile was irrigated, so I could build cottages everywhere without suffering hammer output much. This will be significantly reduced by preventing windtraps from spreading water.

And expansion is too fast because settlers are just too cheap.

Also: this was at normal speed, but I find the game in general has a much better feel when played at epic speed. At normal you burn through the game too fast.

Finally, AI autoplays are highly misleading because of their whipping/drafting problem. They would have much larger economies if their cities weren't all size 1 because of whipping.

Your economy tuning needs to remove the whipping/drafting, and then try testing.