Dune Wars Enhanced Patching

Thanks for answering !
I guess I'll wait patiently for the new patch then, it seems to be a huuuge changelog when compared to the Patch A o.0

Happy coding and hopefully you'll get everything to work as intended ! :)
 
Thanks.

I want to complete a plan and also it does not make much sense to release a patch with some civs boosted and others not.
Patch A was just to correct some things regarding the first plan/beta version. Next version will not be a patch but a full installer version with a new DLL and packed art.

Went back to work on it in the last days, adding new texts, making the AI use the new Tleilax abilities, improving some interface screens and pedia (eg: promotions are divided in combat, specializing, spy promos, etc, etc), correcting some bugs (eg: BUG itself did not display domestic trade in the economic advisor).

A nice thing is the new tweaks to unit and group selection. Since DW is a mod where units from different domains end up being together consistently in the late game because of all terrain movement units, some things needed to be done. One can now select group all units in the plot independently of domain (without screw ups), can group units that lost the movements points or are cargo without problem. Basically diminishing the annoying screw ups with the interface selection in the late game; simple Mouse clicks or some Alt or Ctl clicks should typically be enough to manage any sort of groups without frustration, I hope.

There's no outrageous quantity of stuff in this mod like in others (nor do I care for it) but fluid gameplay is supposed to be important and also each feature in it is supposed to have sufficient meaning.
 
Just want to say, this is awesome work. I haven't played Dune Wars in some time, but your changes inspire me to give it another roll!
 
Just want to say, this is awesome work. I haven't played Dune Wars in some time, but your changes inspire me to give it another roll!

Thanks.
I have to admit, I find rather curious the amount views that the thread has. But the Dune Universe is, of course, more than interesting enough.
 
This looks great Horatius. Will you also tweak the Imperial religion? I think that House Corino looks slightly bland, compared to others, and maybe the Imperial religion should provide some fighting-related buff to troops (although nothing as strong as the Mahdi proposed above)?
 
Do you have a specific idea in mind?
Consider that the Imperial Religion is meant to represent the influence of the aristocratic houses or "courts". Outside brawls is for what Sardaukar exist.
I understand why you say that the Corrino are bland since their advantages are rather less fancy but simply brutal and straightforward. Nevertheless, they have strong advantages and its not simple to just add more.
 
I quite like your proposal for Imperial and Corrino. I need to fire up the game again (was waiting for the new version :) ) and see what else comes to mind when playing Imperial / Corrino (they are maybe wrongly so intertwined in my mind).
 
I'm going to make the requirement be 60% for standard maps like maglock said, and try to scale it with increments of 5% to ~3% for other sizes and see how it goes. Its not simple at all and I feel that it'll never be balanced for mammoth or the smallest maps.

Hi Horatius! Looks like some impressive changes so far :goodjob: Really looking forward to a new release. Great to hear that the AI can win spice monopoly victories now!

One important thing to note from my old -thread- is the display of the required amount of spice to win. If you set it to 60% then 60/40 = 150% of AI spice. So for example if AI has 200 spice total then the goal spice for the human should be displayed as 300 spice. This way, the goal doesn't keep changing when you get more spice, it only changes based upon how much spice the AI has.

Hopefully you can add this in and of course change the display based upon map size (so huge might be 65% = 65/35 = 185% of AI)

Other than that, keep going and hope to see a new release soon :)
 
What is exactly the "long range" sonic wave ? did that mean this unit fire at more than contact and the sonic wave has more range than missile or artillerie ?

I have one another idea about the greatest limitation of the Civ4 engine, I'll explain it in french :
La production de ressources n'a pas d'échelle, et donc une seule de chaque suffit pour tout un empire quelle que soit sa taille. C'est dommage car ça réduit les possibilités d'échanges, et n'est pas très réaliste. Dans dunewars le fait que l'épice soit renouvelable résout ce problème pour l'épice, mais toutes les autres ressources gardent le défaut de civ4. Il y a plusieurs moyens pour le corriger, mais le plus simple auquel je pense serait juste de fractionner la production. Par ex une mine produit non plus "1" cristal, mais "5/5ème" de cristal, et ensuite chaque ville en consomme 1/5 pour avoir le bonus correspondant. Une mine n'alimente pas plus de 5 villes. Et bien sûr il faudrait pouvoir échanger des fractions avec les adversaires et non pas seulement des ressources complètes.

L'intérêt c'est que ça devrait produire plus d'échanges commerciaux au début du jeu, lorsque toutes les nations sont en excédents de leurs ressources locales, et ensuite plus de tensions à la fin de la partie quand tous les empires ont grandit et que leur consommation réduit les excédents mondiaux disponibles en créant petit à petit de la pénurie.

Optionnellement, il pourrait y avoir des bâtiments qui augmentent la production (ou la transforment) comme ça existe dans certains mod, mais je ne suis pas sûr que ça apporte quelque chose à dunewars. Aussi, l'amélioration de certaines cases pourrait augmenter le nombre de fractions produites (je pense notamment aux mines, qui pourraient produire un peu plus quand on les agrandit).

Voilà, si tu veux faire quelque chose de cette idée je pense que ça apporterai beaucoup au jeu.
 
Hi Horatius! Looks like some impressive changes so far :goodjob: Really looking forward to a new release. Great to hear that the AI can win spice monopoly victories now!

One important thing to note from my old -thread- is the display of the required amount of spice to win. If you set it to 60% then 60/40 = 150% of AI spice. So for example if AI has 200 spice total then the goal spice for the human should be displayed as 300 spice. This way, the goal doesn't keep changing when you get more spice, it only changes based upon how much spice the AI has.

Hopefully you can add this in and of course change the display based upon map size (so huge might be 65% = 65/35 = 185% of AI)

Other than that, keep going and hope to see a new release soon :)

Thanks for that.
I'm still hesitant though. Solely basing the formula on the rival's spice can lead to easier wins (assuming you control enough desert, of course) by raiding. It doesn't matter if your cities are in danger and you lose all your pillaging units: as long as you drastically and quickly reduce the rivals' spice (or a few civs are using Arrakis Paradise) then you win just like that. Way easier than Domination.
No matter what formula is used, something always feels off about the whole thing.

Maybe, a project could be allowed to be created once you reach the threshold and its completion would trigger the win, I don't know.
 
What is exactly the "long range" sonic wave ? did that mean this unit fire at more than contact and the sonic wave has more range than missile or artillerie ?

You never really played Dune 2? There the tank fires in a straight line a special sound wave or sonic energy that damages all it runs through until a certain distance. If I recall correctly, it was specially a hard counter vs infantry.

I have one another idea about the greatest limitation of the Civ4 engine, I'll explain it in french :
La production de ressources n'a pas d'échelle, et donc une seule de chaque suffit pour tout un empire quelle que soit sa taille. C'est dommage car ça réduit les possibilités d'échanges, et n'est pas très réaliste. Dans dunewars le fait que l'épice soit renouvelable résout ce problème pour l'épice, mais toutes les autres ressources gardent le défaut de civ4. Il y a plusieurs moyens pour le corriger, mais le plus simple auquel je pense serait juste de fractionner la production. Par ex une mine produit non plus "1" cristal, mais "5/5ème" de cristal, et ensuite chaque ville en consomme 1/5 pour avoir le bonus correspondant. Une mine n'alimente pas plus de 5 villes. Et bien sûr il faudrait pouvoir échanger des fractions avec les adversaires et non pas seulement des ressources complètes.

L'intérêt c'est que ça devrait produire plus d'échanges commerciaux au début du jeu, lorsque toutes les nations sont en excédents de leurs ressources locales, et ensuite plus de tensions à la fin de la partie quand tous les empires ont grandit et que leur consommation réduit les excédents mondiaux disponibles en créant petit à petit de la pénurie.

Optionnellement, il pourrait y avoir des bâtiments qui augmentent la production (ou la transforment) comme ça existe dans certains mod, mais je ne suis pas sûr que ça apporte quelque chose à dunewars. Aussi, l'amélioration de certaines cases pourrait augmenter le nombre de fractions produites (je pense notamment aux mines, qui pourraient produire un peu plus quand on les agrandit).

Voilà, si tu veux faire quelque chose de cette idée je pense que ça apporterai beaucoup au jeu.

Cette idée me semble interessante, mais c'est compliqué de la accomplir. Beaucoup de choses doivent être changé et je peur pour le AI. Je vais garder cette idée pour le future, mais, sans l'aide de personne, j'hésite. Une étape à la fois.

Par ailleurs, pourrais tu refaire le "Suspensor Gunship"? C'est le modèle le plus faible de le paquet graphique. Il me ressemble à un croisement avec une petite lampe.
 
C'est vrai que ce n'est pas le plus réussi, je verrais ce que je peux faire.

You never really played Dune 2? There the tank fires in a straight line a special sound wave or sonic energy that damages all it runs through until a certain distance. If I recall correctly, it was specially a hard counter vs infantry.

I have played dune2, but there is major difference with dunewars because here we haven't range at all : all units fire at contact in civ.
In dune2, the sonic tank has the same range as heavy tank, little more than quad/trike, but less than missile launcher (and was really effective only against no or little armored tarjets). So bring back to civ4 game, it give the same range to all, or maybe a bombardment capacity to the sonic tank, like siege engine, or a first strike to simulate the fact that is fire the first, or something like that. But if I understand correctly the "range 1" you have made a sonic tank able to shoot something in the adjacent tile, without retaliation ?
 
Yes, it seemed it best solution concerning the Civ IV mechanics. I wanted it to be sufficiently different from siege weapons as well.
 
Next version will not be a patch but a full installer version with a new DLL and packed art.

Any news on when we can expect a new version of this?
 
Thanks for that.
I'm still hesitant though. Solely basing the formula on the rival's spice can lead to easier wins (assuming you control enough desert, of course) by raiding. It doesn't matter if your cities are in danger and you lose all your pillaging units: as long as you drastically and quickly reduce the rivals' spice (or a few civs are using Arrakis Paradise) then you win just like that. Way easier than Domination.
No matter what formula is used, something always feels off about the whole thing.

Maybe, a project could be allowed to be created once you reach the threshold and its completion would trigger the win, I don't know.

The point I was making was that only the display of the goal would be changed to be based off of the AIs spice. This is to eliminate the problem of the goal value going up all the time when you keep building more spice.

The value would still be calculated based off of total spice. So it wouldn't make the victory any easier, just make it so the player can reason better about how much spice he really needs to build to win. :)
--

On an unrelated note, I just played a game as Irulan on a standard sized Arrakis map. I tried a cultural victory using Imperial religion. I found that the last 150 turns of the game I was just clicking Next Turn all the time.

I gained multiple Great Nobleman and spammed the 4000 culture bomb in round robin fashion to the city with lowest culture. Built most wonders, including the one that gives +50% culture building in all cities. All 4 had the feudal building that gives +50%. I was running the +100% culture civic and 100% cultural slider. Each of the four cities was running as many Great Nobleman as they could hire (usually 6).

Needless to say that was a LOT of culture. And it still took forever.

So I say that this victory condition needs an overhaul. Either drop the number of cities back to 3 or lower the legendary culture threshold from 50000 to something more sane. Or possibly add many more cultural buildings to the game.

Either way, I could have easily steamrolled the AI via conquest or even holy war 100 years earlier had I not been trying for a cultural victory.

Anyhow, as with everyone else, I am greatly looking forward to the next update and hope it will be out soon. Some of those changes you have made sound awesome. :goodjob:
 
Hip hip hurray, bestas.

Terribly sorry to see you take this attitude. You did good work that was enjoyable. But unfortunately not everyone has your talent to help either.

JosEPh
 
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